Canola has positioned itself next to peanut butter and poutine as one of Canada’s greatest food inventions—something Keith Downey, a father of five and “Father of Canola,” could never have predicted when he and Winnipeg-based researcher Baldur Stefansson made the discovery back in the 1970s. “I don’t think either Stefansson or myself ever would have visualized that we would be able to have a crop that was occupying the millions of acres that we see now,” says the 89-year-old Downey.

Downey, who now lives in the canola-surrounded prairie community of Okotoks, Alta., just south of Calgary, couldn’t have predicted that those yellow flowers would become a staple backdrop for every prairie wedding photoshoot; that it would be Canada’s second-largest crop export; that it would add $19.3 billion to Canada’s economy every year; that 15 per cent of all Canadian farmers would rely on it as a source of income; and that it would cover 30 per cent of the country’s viable crop land.

It’s been over 40 years since Downey and Stefansson removed two genetic traits from rapeseed through traditional plant breeding to create what we now know as canola–“can” for Canada, “ola” for oil–and in that time, Downey’s been appointed to the Order of Canada, inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame, and seen a Saskatoon street named after him. “There’s never been a dull moment, even now,” he says, with a chuckle. “It’s been a great ride.”

This year, Statistics Canada is predicting that Canadian farmers will produce 17 million tonnes of the oilseed, down only slightly from last year’s haul, maintaining Canada’s status as the world’s largest producer of the crop. “It is a made-in-Canada success story,” says Patti Miller, president of the Canola Council of Canada. “It’s grown into a huge economic driver, not only just for farmers but for the Canadian economy.”

But has Canada become too reliant on the crop as a source of income?

“Farmers have been very much addicted to canola for a long time,” says Dilantha Fernando, a professor at the University of Manitoba. Year after year, canola has proven to be a profitable crop for farmers to plant. Fernando says this addiction invites poor crop practices, including tighter crop rotations, that contribute to the spread of disease—such as blackleg. The fungal disease, which first appeared in Saskatchewan in the mid-’70s, darkens canola’s stems and roots, and causes significant damage to the quality and yield of the crop. Over the years, scientists have introduced blackleg-resistant strains of canola, but as the crop evolves, so do the pathogens responsible for causing the damage.

For the second time in less than a decade, the presence of blackleg in Canadian canola has caused trade tensions with its second-largest importer of the seed: China. In 2015, China spent $2 billion on Canadian canola seed, but now, the Asian power wants Canada to reduce the amount of dockage—stems, leaves, chaff, and other non-canola bits that may harbour blackleg—entering with the seed shipments from 2.5 per cent of every tonne to just one per cent. Initially, Canada was meant to reach this target by Sept. 1—a deadline that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau managed to extend while on his eight-day, trade-heavy trip to China.

Both Trudeau and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang say they’re confident they can come up with a long-term solution to the blackleg problem, but if they don’t, it’ll trickle all the way down to Canadian farmers, including Greg Sears, a canola grower near Grande Prairie, Alta. “A lot of producers are really in a wait-and-see position,” the 49-year-old father of two says. “All of our decisions have been made; our crop is ready to be harvested.”

Sears, who also acts as chair on the Alberta Canola Producers Commission, keeps his canola on a two-year rotation, meaning he alternates every year between planting canola and a cereal crop (wheat or barley). Fernando would like to see that number increased to at least three.

“We need to look at both sides, rather than just complain that the Chinese are putting in these restrictions,” the plant scientist says. “Our farmers are going to be at the receiving end if we just allow them to go with an addiction to one crop, because that’s the way pathogens thrive and economics will tell us farmers will start to lose.”

These dockage restrictions, if put in place, would increase cleaning costs and mean more seed in each shipment for the same price—all translating into a lower price for Canadian producers, like Sears. “Down the road, if we see erosion in price forecasts for canola and any other product, it may make some producers change their cropping decisions,” he says, adding that in the end, farmers need to feed their families.

And if China sets a standard for other canola importers, the overpowering smell—part urine, part perfume, part nut—that takes over the prairies every summer could slowly dissipate. “Canola is our crop, so we need to have pride in that,” says Fernando, “but at the same time, do everything possible to make this crop a long-lasting crop, not for short-term gain.”

The father of canola isn’t too fussed about the crop’s possibly uncertain future. “This is a blip in the trade relations,” Downey says, “and it’s going to be resolved one way or another.”

What it feels like to seed canola in Saskatchewan

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/is-canada-addicted-to-canola/feed/1In praise of the Yukon Gold potatohttp://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/in-praise-of-the-yukon-gold-potato/
http://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/in-praise-of-the-yukon-gold-potato/#commentsSat, 23 Apr 2016 11:18:02 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=862533Fifty years ago the Yukon Gold potato was invented. One man is on a mission to make sure the world knows it and celebrates this Canadian success story.

On Barack Obama’s table at holiday feasts; on Justin Trudeau’s plate at his White House state dinner; and on the Oscar gala hors-d’oeuvres trays, was a small yellow potato called the Yukon Gold. Alexander York von Sivers, a 59-year-old man in Toronto, is on a mission to make sure everybody knows it. “It’s a story that had to be told,” he says.

York has been working for three years to publicize the 50th anniversary of the invention of this potato, which was bred by researchers at the University of Guelph in 1966. “I’m going after every food editor in the United States,” he says. “I’d like to have potato festivals across Canada. I’ve spoken with Martha Stewart’s executive director five times, and she’s trying to get me a congratulatory letter. If I had my way, I’d have a huge Yukon Gold event in Times Square.”

The Yukon Gold, with its roots in Ontario, has become a posh potato. It was served dauphinoise at the state dinner, and frequently to the Obamas, mashed. At the Oscars in February, 600 kg of roasted Yukon Golds were presented with crème fraiche and Caspian caviar, prepared at the command of Wolfgang Puck. Queen Elizabeth II dines on the potato at Buckingham Palace; Rachael Ray calls for it in her recipes; and Chelsea Clinton endorses it as a personal favourite. But as York says, “the average Canadian is not aware of the Hollywood status of this potato.”

York has spent about 500 hours digging through archives on the potato. His fixation is partly due to his father, Hans von Sivers. Hans was a laboratory technician with Garnet “Gary” Johnston, the University of Guelph researcher who led a team that cross-bred two varieties to create the Yukon Gold. Before its invention, North American farmers only grew white-fleshed potatoes, and Johnston anticipated the appeal of a yellow, small-sized variety, which looks like it’s drenched in butter. “It was a revolutionary concept,” says Hielke De Jong, a potato breeder with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, who knew Johnston. “He was a pioneer. He had the vision for yellow-fleshed potatoes.”

The invention came from a male parent grown in North Dakota (considered male because it spreads pollen), and a female, yellow parent grown in Peru. After 14 years, on the 66th cross of 1966, Johnston created a variety known technically as G6666-4y (“G” for Guelph, 4 for the fourth selection from the cross, and “y” for yellow). Johnston originally named it after the Yukon River—his previous varieties included the Huron and the Rideau—but his colleague Walter Shy suggested adding the word “Gold” in honour of its yellow tint. Not to be confused with “new potatoes,” which are small, sweet spuds of any variety picked earliest in the season, the Yukon Gold has pink eyes and tan skin.

Soon after Yukon Golds hit the market in 1980, chefs were serving it to presidents. “When I started at the White House, it became like the new kid on the block,” says former White House chef John Moeller. “I like the butteriness of it. I do a purée, with added parsnip purée and sweated-down leeks. It’s a nice smooth consistency. When you see a white potato, it just doesn’t look as appealing.” Moeller also cooks Yukon Golds au gratin with garlic custard, and he roasts baby Yukons to serve as marble-sized garnishing. “You can put one potato on your fork and eat it in one bite,” he says.

Alex Docherty, a P.E.I. potato farmer, also recalls the rise of the new spud. “It was known in all of North America as the champion, the best yellow potato that was ever grown,” he says. “If you said ‘I got a load of yellows,’ the first question out of the buyer would be, ‘Are they Yukon Golds?’ ”

Yukon Gold potato. (Photograph by Reena Newman)

Yukon Golds became so sought-after that grocery stores began disguising other varieties as Yukon Golds—a practice that potato breeders say still continues today. “You see it in the grocery stores,” says De Jong. A different controversy arose in 1997 when Hillary Clinton falsely claimed that everything on the menu at a White House state dinner, including the Yukon Golds, was American. A New York Times food editor exposed the slip-up, and the Clinton administration issued an apology, giving the Yukon Gold a marketing boost. “Without the New York Times,” says York, “this potato never would have succeeded.”

Johnston died in 2000, at age 85, of diabetes complications, having never made a penny off his potato (prior to the 1990 Canadian Plant Breeders’ Rights Act, breeders didn’t have intellectual property rights). York now wants to commemorate the man’s work and build a library on the potato. “I want to make sure Gary Johnston isn’t a footnote in Canadian history,” he says.

As a day job, York works as a freelancer chasing interview subjects for radio stations and news outlets, having studied marketing at Ryerson University. He wants to write a book on the potato and film a documentary with footage from inside the White House kitchen. He hopes to crowdfund $200,000 for an agriculture scholarship in Johnston’s memory and raise the status of the University of Guelph. “I want to get this in every relevant textbook in the country,” he says. He also plans to coordinate potato festivals with trivia competitions and book sales to raise money for food banks.

While the Yukon Gold may be celebrated as an innovation story, potatoes in general are rarely celebrated as a vegetable. Sales in Canada dropped 30 per cent between 2004 and 2014. “It doesn’t get the credit that it deserves,” says Greg Donald, general manager of the P.E.I. Potato Board. “It had some rough years there with the Atkins diet, but it’s still there, and it’s still a great vegetable.” The potato is also a reliable vegetable for chefs, compared to greens, tomatoes or carrots, which are less predictable and rot faster. “The majority of the time, the vegetables are my nemesis,” says Moeller. “Sometimes I order baby carrots, and they’re adolescents or adults. Potatoes are definitely consistent.”

Amid more than 150 potato varieties grown in Canada, farmers debate which is the best. Breeders are looking for multi-purpose varieties with higher yields and shelf lives. “Just like cars, they’re looking for newer and better models,” says Donald of the P.E.I. Potato Board. Farmer Peter Griffin, whose company owns the trademark for Bud the Spud, suggests the slightly larger, yellow Annabelle potato, from Holland, is “destined to become a Canadian favourite.” The Yukon Gold also isn’t the only potato with celebrity status; when Islander Adam McQuaid of the Boston Bruins brought home the Stanley Cup, he filled it with a variety called Superior potatoes, and Marcia Cross of Desperate Housewives stars in a commercial for a variety called Rooster. Docherty, who stopped growing Yukon Golds about five years ago, says, “every breeder in the world is trying to find a replacement for the Yukon Gold.”

Proponents of the Yukon argue it won’t fade away. Although the variety is susceptible to certain diseases, such as the “common scab,” De Jong says farmers can deal with its weaknesses. “Potatoes are like people,” he says. “No potato is perfect.” York appreciates that other varieties are emerging, but he says, “a long, long list of famous chefs and foodies are very, very loyal to the Yukon.”

York grows the Yukon Gold in his own garden, and he’s collecting antique potato crates and sacks from the Yukon Gold’s history. Johnston’s colleague, Walter Shy, might have helped York commemorate the potato, but he died in 1995. “He was going to move mountains for the 50th anniversary,” says York. “I felt it was time that Canadians learn the story, especially young Canadians, so they can be inspired to become successful innovators. It’s always on my mind. Who am I going to contact next?”

A scientist examines an ear of corn in one of Monsanto’s GMO testing labs. (Daniel Shea)

Chipotle Mexican Grill’s view of life beyond its doors is pretty disturbing for a burrito chain. A few years ago it released an animated short film that showed a scarecrow poking around a dusty, dystopian world where long tubes extrude “beef-ish” meat, mechanical milkers suck cows dry and robots repeatedly stab chickens with hormone-filled needles. The intended message was clear: Big Food is ruining the planet, Chipotle’s 1,900 locations and hundreds of suppliers notwithstanding.

So it came as little surprise when Chipotle said last spring it was ridding its U.S. restaurants of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. The term refers to plants or animals that have had their genetic makeup altered to resist pests, disease or even commercial herbicides by inserting genes from other species. Critics dubbed such products “Frankenfoods” and have called for mandatory labels, if not outright bans. Chipotle declared it was “G-M-Over it.”

While Chipotle’s anti-GMO stance seemingly jibes with its “Food with integrity” promise (which, incidentally, took a hit last year when more than 500 people in a dozen U.S. states contracted food-borne illnesses after eating at its restaurants) the company’s explanation for going GMO-free begs credulity. “We don’t believe the scientific community has reached consensus on the long-term implications of widespread GMO cultivation and consumption,” Chipotle says on its website, implying a level of familiarity with the life sciences not normally associated with fast-casual restaurants. Chipotle goes on to cite a 2012 study documenting increased use of herbicide and pesticides on GM crops and speculates ominously about an “escalating arms race with weeds and insects.”

Such is the nature of the emotional, often hyperbolic debate around GM foods, which first reared their head in the 1990s when agri-giant Monsanto introduced varieties of canola, corn, cotton and soybean genetically engineered to be resistant to its Roundup brand of herbicide. On the one side are seed companies and farmers, who like the convenience and improvements in crop yield. On the other are activists who are concerned about unforeseen health and environmental impacts. A hungry, confused public is caught in between.

Chipotle restaurant workers fill orders for customers on the day that the company announced it will only use non-GMO ingredients in its food. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

But the discussion shows signs of undergoing an important shift in tone—in part because of climate change. Not only do companies like Monsanto profess to have the tools to feed a world increasingly stricken by drought and pestilence, but the listen-to-the-science mantra that environmental groups espouse when taking on climate-change skeptics has proven difficult to square with their anti-GMO campaigns, which tend to gloss over much of the available scientific research on GM foods. In 2013, British environmentalist and author Mark Lynas became one of the first to publicly admit his anti-GMO stance had become “intellectually incompetent and dishonest,” while U.S. TV personality and science educator Bill Nye (the Science Guy) last year revisited his cautious outlook on GMOs after visiting Monsanto’s St. Louis labs. In February, state-owned ChemChina agreed to pay US$43 billion for Swiss agricultural giant Syngenta, which sells both conventional and GM seeds. That’s more than double what China National Offshore Oil Corporation paid for Canadian oil and gas firm Nexen back in 2012, demonstrating that the country of 1.3 billion clearly places strategic importance on boosting the efficiency of its farmland.

Of course, none of this is to say GM foods are perfect—only that they’ve been unfairly demonized in a society that often conflates “natural” and “healthy.” Like any new technology, there are pros and cons, risks and benefits. But, for the first time in years, the atmosphere seems conducive to a rational discussion about GM food and its potential. That’s a good thing, too, because the industry is busy readying ever more items for the dinner table, including a genetically modified salmon that could soon be bred on Prince Edward Island. We might as well understand what’s on the menu.

Chipotle may be among the most sanctimonious retailers to have taken a stand against GM foods in recent years, but it certainly isn’t alone. Whole Foods has promised to label any GMO products in its stores by 2018. General Mills, meanwhile, said two years ago it would start making its Cheerios breakfast cereal with non-GMO ingredients, as did Post Foods with Grape Nuts. More than 2,000 retailers have signed on to the Non-GMO Project, a third-party verification program acting in the absence of laws requiring mandatory labels on products containing GM ingredients.

It’s not easy being GMO-free, however. Chipotle was forced to add a disclaimer to its GMO tough talk, since the meat and cheese in its burritos and bowls most likely comes from cows and pigs that ate genetically modified feed. The same goes for the beverages sold in its restaurants, “including those containing high-fructose corn syrup, which is almost always made from GMO corn.” Whole Foods similarly explains on its website that about 88 per cent of corn grown in the U.S. is genetically modified, as is 95 per cent of sugar beets, 93 per cent of canola and 94 per cent of soybeans. “It’s impossible for us to exclude GMOs as an overarching standard at this time,” the grocer says, adding GMOs are “pervasive” and can be found in 70 per cent of packaged foods.

So what, exactly, have food companies been feeding us? At present, most genetically modified ingredients stem from cereals and crops that have either been engineered to be resistant to specific herbicides, like Monsanto’s Roundup (made with glyphosate), or resistant to certain kinds of pests, as is the case with Bt corn and Bt Cotton (Bt stands for Bacillus thuringiensis, a naturally occurring soil bacterium, which is the organism the organic farming industry relies on to make a popular natural pesticide).

More consumer-facing GM products are on the horizon, however, and Canada has emerged as an unexpected leader in the field. Summerland, B.C.’s Okanagan Specialty Fruits last year received approval from Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to grow and sell the world’s first non-browning GM apples in this country after figuring out how to “turn off” the gene that makes the flesh discolour. Similarly, Massachusetts-based AquaBounty received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last fall for the world’s first genetically modified fish. The AquaAdvantage salmon is a farm-raised Atlantic salmon imbued with growth hormone genes from a Chinook salmon and an eel-like creature called an ocean pout. The changes allow it to grow much more quickly—a potential boon for the aquaculture industry. Though Health Canada has yet to sign off on GM salmon for Canadian consumption, AquaBounty’s CEO Ronald Stotish is optimistic. “We are hopeful the Canadian government will approve our application just as the U.S. FDA has done,” he says. (Both Okanagan Specialty Fruits and AquaBounty are owned by a U.S. conglomerate called Intrexon, whose name and slogan—“A better world through better DNA”—seems inspired by the 1982 movie Blade Runner.)

Needless to say, such petri-dish creations run opposite to the current Western obsession with all manner of “natural” and “authentic” food trends. Free-range. Nose-to-tail. Organically grown. Basically anything reminiscent of how one’s great-grandparents once subsisted, minus the subsistence part. It’s here where the gulf between agribusiness and consumers once seemed insurmountable—that is, until the drumbeat of science became too difficult to ignore.

There is now a long list of national bodies that suggest approved GMOs are no riskier to eat than conventionally produced food. In addition to regulators, they include: the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Medical Association, the Royal Society of Medicine, the World Health Organization and the European Commission (even though more than a dozen European countries want to ban GM crops). Moreover, a 2015 Pew Research Center survey of scientists who belong to the American Association for the Advancement of Science found that 88 per cent believe it is safe to eat GM foods, compared to just 37 per cent of the public at large. That’s slightly higher (one percentage point) than the number of scientists who believed climate change was “mostly due to human activity.” Given that just about everything we eat, from apricots to zucchini, has been genetically modified though selective breeding practices, astrophysicist and TV personality Neil deGrasse Tyson summed up the feelings of many within the scientific community when, two years ago, he suggested anti-GMO activists should just “chill out.”

Does that mean there are zero concerns? Not exactly. About 300 European scientists and legal experts signed a joint letter a few years ago that said, in effect, there wasn’t yet enough evidence to say GMOs are completely safe, or unsafe for that matter. Similarly, a study last year by a researcher at Tufts University highlighted about two dozen studies where GMOs were fed to animals that later showed adverse effects or “health uncertainties.” The author, sensibly, recommended trying to replicate the results “to see if they hold up to rigorous testing.” The WHO says on its website that “GM foods currently available on the international market have passed safety assessments and are not likely to present risks for human health.”

Critics’ concerns go beyond safety. Many have also complained about the agricultural industry’s heavy-handed tactics, including patenting GM seeds and then suing farmers who save seed and replant without a licence. Others are worried about cross-contamination, since some farmers, particularly organic ones, could be locked out of some markets if GM seeds are carried onto their land by birds or wind. At the same time, recent studies have shown increased spraying of glyphosate over the past decade as GM crops were quickly adopted around the world, suggesting the emergence of herbicide-resistant “superweeds” (a problem, it should be noted, not strictly limited to GM crops). “It’s been 20 years since the first genetically modified crops were approved in Canada,” says Lucy Sharratt, the Ottawa-based coordinator of the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network (CBAN), a coalition of farmer, environmental and international development organizations with concerns about genetic engineering. “But there’s been no evaluation from the federal government as to the risks and benefits of that experiment.”

Andreas Boecker, an associate professor at the University of Guelph’s department of food, agricultural and resource economics, argues that the sooner Canadians realize GMOs are neither a magical cure nor a pox on humanity, the better. “It would be a big mistake to ban a technology for more or less ideological reasons,” he says. “Where the debate has to go to be productive is to look at risk management.” He likens GM food to automobiles in this respect, noting thousands die in traffic accidents but we continue to drive because the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. The one difference with GM foods, Boecker says, is each one is unique, meaning “we have to look at every single product case-by-case.”

It’s for this reason that calls for mandatory labelling of GM foods have been so controversial. While groups like CBAN argue consumers have a right to know what they’re buying, food companies counter that government-mandated labels imply a hidden danger, and note GM foods are more extensively safety-tested than conventional varieties. Nye, for his part, has argued the industry should slap “proudly GMO” labels on its products and let the market decide—which may not actually be as suicidal as it sounds. The Arctic apple, after all, trumpets its non-browning qualities as its main selling point. Similarly, the AquaAdvantage salmon is being pitched as a more sustainable alternative, since the fish “can be produced in land-based facilities closer to population centres, reducing the cost and carbon footprint of transportation.” It’s conceivable that future GM foods may offer even more attractive advantages.

One thing’s for certain: GM technologies aren’t going anywhere. Florida orange growers are looking to genetic technology to help them battle citrus greening disease. Bananas, another at-risk monoculture, may also need a GM fix to keep them on supermarket shelves. Others see a bright future for drought-resistant GM crops as farmers around the world grapple with climate change.

Even Chipotle might not be immune. Two years ago the burrito chain warned that its popular guacamole could be at risk if severe weather events, expected to become more frequent as global temperatures warm, caused avocado prices to spike. The Internet went into panic mode. It thus remains to be seen what Chipotle executives find most scary: a future full of “unnatural” GM foods, or one populated by millions of irate customers.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/society/science/in-praise-of-genetically-modified-foods/feed/26Saskatchewan town votes to change ‘Land of Rape and Honey’ sloganhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan-town-votes-to-change-land-of-rape-and-honey-slogan/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan-town-votes-to-change-land-of-rape-and-honey-slogan/#commentsWed, 14 Oct 2015 18:41:47 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=769591Rape refers to rapeseed, once a key crop—but some in Tisdale, Sask. were concerned the name offended people who thought it meant sexual assault

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan-town-votes-to-change-land-of-rape-and-honey-slogan/feed/1Agriculture minister says time running short for U.S. to fix meat label lawhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/agriculture-minister-says-time-running-short-for-u-s-to-fix-meat-label-law/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/agriculture-minister-says-time-running-short-for-u-s-to-fix-meat-label-law/#respondMon, 29 Dec 2014 10:16:02 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=657615Canada could apply as early as the summer to impose retaliatory tariffs on a long list of U.S. goods including beef, orange juice and wine

]]>Canada’s agriculture minister says time is running short for the U.S. to avoid trade tariffs over its discriminatory meat labelling laws.

Gerry Ritz said if Washington doesn’t change its country of origin labelling laws to comply with World Trade Organization rulings in the coming months, Canada will apply as early as the summer to impose retaliatory tariffs on a long list of U.S. goods including beef, orange juice and wine.

“The clock is ticking and the American administration knows it,” Ritz said in an interview.

Last month, the United States filed its final appeal of a WTO ruling that found its meat labelling laws, known as COOL, discriminate against Canadian beef and pork exports.

COOL rules require all packaged meat to identify where the animal was born, raised and slaughtered.

Supporters of the law say it better informs U.S. consumers, but opponents argue that segregating animals and tracking them adds costs and violates free-trade agreements.

The federal government estimates the policy costs Canada’s pork and beef industries more than $1 billion a year.

Ritz said Canada expects a ruling by the WTO on the U.S. appeal by the middle of 2015. If Washington loses again and fails to act, Canada will seek permission from the trade organization to hit back.

“We are being told that some time late spring or early summer we will have a pretty good direction as to where that is going to go,” Ritz said. “We will start lobbying very hard at the WTO to initiate the retaliatory process.”

So far the U.S. response to the latest trade ruling has Canada’s beef industry wondering if Washington can fix COOL in time.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has been quoted as saying the Obama administration needs direction from Congress on what to do with the meat-labelling legislation.

At the same time, Congress has asked Vilsack for a report by May 1 on what changes need to be made to COOL to comply with the WTO.

John Masswohl, a spokesman for the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association, said such last minute back-and-forth doesn’t give the Americans much time to act.

“U.S. exporters to Canada should remain concerned as Congress is flirting dangerously close to the timeline for the WTO to authorize Canada and Mexico to implement retaliatory tariffs,” he said.

Masswohl said the beef industry in Canada will not be satisfied if Washington simply tinkers with COOL. He said producers want it repealed.

Ritz said Canada made it clear last year that it is prepared to retaliate with trade sanctions if Washington doesn’t comply with the WTO ruling and has reinforced the point many times since.

He said the federal government won’t hesitate to act and may add more items to the trade sanction list that already includes pork, cheese, apples, corn, maple syrup, chocolate, pasta, jewelry and mattresses.

“We have the ability to add to it should we need to put pressure on a state, senator or congressman. We are serious,” Ritz said.

“At the end of the day you can be assured that we are not going to blink.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/agriculture-minister-says-time-running-short-for-u-s-to-fix-meat-label-law/feed/0The Editorial: Protecting Canada’s farmland, the right wayhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/the-editorial-protecting-canadas-farmland-the-right-way/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/the-editorial-protecting-canadas-farmland-the-right-way/#commentsThu, 20 Nov 2014 19:45:05 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=641845Canada’s agricultural land is being subsumed by development around our biggest cities. But protecting that land comes with its own problems.

Canada was once a country of farms. At Confederation, four out of every five Canadians were farmers. Today, farmers comprise less than two per cent of the population and produce a mere 1.1 per cent of GDP. Should it come as any surprise that the amount of farmland in Canada is shrinking, as well?

Last week, Statistics Canada released a comprehensive look at agriculture in Canada, bringing together the latest economic, geographic and ecological indicators. The most noteworthy observation: Nearly one million hectares of “dependable agricultural land” has disappeared from cultivation over the past 10 years, most of it subsumed by development around Canada’s biggest cities.

Given that most Canadians still retain a deep emotional attachment to our country’s farming heritage, as well as growing preferences for local food and farmers’ markets, the question of how much land should be farmed, and where, has become a pressing public policy issue. We should be careful what we wish for.

Canada is blessed with more than 50 million hectares of good-quality farmland. More than half of this is on the Prairies, with the rest scattered across other provinces, in particular, around the lower Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Valley. Between 2001 and 2011, however, the supply of this farmland declined by 969, 802 hectares, or 2.6 per cent. It’s the biggest drop in any 10-year period going back to 1971. And it’s a trend that’s not about to stop.

“As Canada’s population grows and cities develop and spread outward, the loss of some of the country’s best farmland will likely continue,” StatsCan observes, pointing out Canada’s fastest-growing cities tend to be located near the best agricultural zones.

That said, the Prairies are at little risk of being paved under. Canada’s position as an agricultural powerhouse is in no way threatened by urban sprawl, although the best farming regions of Ontario and Quebec are under significant pressure. It’s also worth noting the resiliency and innovation inherent in the agricultural industry. One little-noticed aspect of Canada’s recent farmland inventory is that the Taiga Plains of northern Alberta and western Northwest Territories appear for the first time as a viable agricultural area, with almost 2,000 hectares of recognized farmland—the result of technology and climate change. Agriculture is constantly adapting to new conditions and, thus, the supply of farmland is not fixed. Plus, land set aside for nature preserves has been growing, even as farms disappear.

Further, as Canada transforms itself into an urban nation, we should expect the countryside to change in tandem. Earlier this month, StatsCan also released its first-ever estimates of GDP by metropolitan area. The six largest cities in the country (Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa-Gatineau) now produce nearly half the entire national GDP. With cities the locus of economic growth in Canada, it stands to reason these areas will require greater land resources as they swell in population and activity. Why constrain our strongest players? These same trends are playing out elsewhere: The United States, Russia and Australia have all experienced steeper drops in farmland over the same period.

To date, most efforts at protecting Canada’s farmland have come in the form of greenbelts and agricultural land reserves that restrict development on agricultural land near cities. But there is a cost to such measures. Limiting new land available for housing in areas of high growth inevitably pushes prices higher. Considerable academic evidence is available on this effect in Boston, New York and California. In Britain, economists argue that the greenbelt surrounding London is at least partly to blame for the fact that new home prices are 40 per cent higher than in comparable European regions with similar density, such as the Netherlands. At home, these price effects are felt most deeply by lower-income Canadians. With housing advocacy groups recently demanding Ottawa spend $44 billion over the next 10 years to combat a lack of affordable housing, we shouldn’t overlook the role played by farmland protection in driving up home costs.

Where there’s a conflict between the best economic use of existing farmland and a public desire for its preservation close to urban centres, protection should be used carefully and with an eye on possible fallout for Canada’s most vulnerable citizens. Rather than permanent reserves, it may make more sense to create rolling greenbelts that slowly shift outward as cities’ needs change.

Finally, cities themselves might consider what they can do to protect Canada’s farming legacy by loosening rules on chicken coops and other urban farming practices. If we’re losing farmland on the outskirts of town, perhaps it makes sense to shift more of it downtown.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/the-editorial-protecting-canadas-farmland-the-right-way/feed/2Critics of supply management are milking the argumenthttp://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/critics-of-supply-management-are-milking-the-argument/
http://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/critics-of-supply-management-are-milking-the-argument/#commentsFri, 16 May 2014 18:33:36 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=555709A professor comes to the defence of supply management—it's not perfect, but it's better than the alternative

In a three-part series Martha Hall Findlay, executive fellow at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy and a former Liberal MP, has argued that Canada’s system of supply management for dairy farmers should be dismantled. This is a rebuttal from Professor Bruce Muirhead at the University of Waterloo.

Critics of Canada’s wrongly maligned system of dairy supply management like to milk the unsupported argument that our commitment to preserve the current dairy model puts the country at a disadvantage in every international trade negotiation.

They use this fallacy to lobby the government to dismantle it.

I challenge their basic premise: Is there actually free trade in agriculture? Based on my research and writing of the past 25 years, there is not.

Agriculture is not like oil or steel or widgets. This was recognized and incorporated in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade nearly 60 years ago. Agriculture—the production of our food—was deemed a critical sector to be encouraged and protected by Europeans and others in the global North.

Some countries have equated that protectionism with subsidies.

Take the United States—while the rhetoric would suggest that the U.S. is a free trader, the reality is Washington paid out more than US$3.2 billion for dairy subsidies in 2012, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In fact, subsidies represent about 40 per cent of U.S. dairy farmer incomes.

Just this year, the U.S. brought in a highly subsidized insurance program, the Dairy Producer Margin Protection Program, that pays dairy farmers when the national margin on milk sales falls below a set threshold.

And what about the situation in the European Union? A 2013 study indicates the EU spends about €50 billion in support of all farmers’ incomes, including more than €2.3 billion in subsidies designated for dairy exports. To put that in perspective, this is half of the sales from all Canadian dairy farms.

While the EU has said it will scrap export subsidies, it will only do so if others, particularly the United States, join in. And even then it is doubtful that this would really happen given the historical record.

And the WTO? Clearly, the World Trade Organization is not able to discipline its members effectively, as the European Union does this without contravening its multilateral commitments.

These examples shed light on the truth: it is futile for any country to completely eliminate support for dairy. Two of the world’s most important economic powers—the European Union and the United States—clearly subsidize their dairy sectors, and are unlikely to stop doing so despite whatever text is enshrined in trade agreements.

The case set for Canada, with its supply-managed dairy sector, is obvious—ultimately, there will be no sustained pressure to fundamentally alter its system. This was evident with the results of the CETA.

Early observers of CETA proceedings would have been forgiven if they believe it was a “done deal” as negotiations began in May 2009, given that popular wisdom listed doing away with the dairy model as critical for success. With former Canadian trade minister Roy MacLaren even calling out “this ridiculous system of supply management.”

Yet, a CETA agreement was signed October 2013 and passed by all 28 EU legislatures. Surprisingly, dairy supply management was largely unscathed.

And more recently, with respect to the Trans Pacific-Partnership (TPP) negotiations, while New Zealand has vetoed Canadian participation based on supply management, the American negotiators have stopped short of calling for the end of the Canadian regime, keen to protect their own heavily-subsidized U.S. sugar industry.

TPP reveals other agricultural protectionisms at play. While it would seem New Zealand would have a natural ally in the United States in protesting Canada’s dairy model, in fact there is as significant disagreement between New Zealand and the United States as there is between Canada and those nations.

Indeed, at the same time that dairy groups in the United States are pushing for Canadian dairy liberalization, these U.S. dairy groups are also pushing for protection for their own products from New Zealand.

Because of the EU and U.S. reliance on agricultural subsidies and the political pressures within their countries to protect agricultural industries, supply management is safe—at least for the time being.

The reality is this: supply management is not perfect, but it is more perfect in the Canadian context than any other system of dairy market organization.

Canadian dairy farming is one of the few agricultural sectors that is self-sufficient—providing income security for farmers and requiring no government subsidy. This means Canadian farmers can invest in their farms, communities and Canada, and preserves the family farm.

We need only look to Australia to see the risk of eliminating any controls on our dairy regime. As I have previously published and studied, as of 2000, Australia opted for a completely subsidy-free regime, with disastrous results. The result of Australia’s lack of intervention demonstrates the necessity of some sort of governmental or other authority’s involvement to promote a stable dairy system.

Only time will tell if Canadian genius in the form of supply management will survive. Based on my extensive analysis of competing systems, to lose it would be a tragedy—it has served dairy farmers, consumers and processors well for decades, proving cost-effective, safe and secure dairy products in a world where those realities are increasingly difficult to guarantee.

Bruce Muirhead is a professor of history and associate vice-president, external research, at the University of Waterloo. To read the full text of Dr. Muirhead’s latest research report “Crying over Spilt Milk: The History of Dairy Supply Management and Its Role in Recent Trade Negotiations” visit http://www.cigionline.org/activity/crying-over-spilt-milk

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/critics-of-supply-management-are-milking-the-argument/feed/9Canada hurting itself with protectionist practices in agriculture: reporthttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada-hurting-itself-with-protectionist-practices-in-agriculture-report/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada-hurting-itself-with-protectionist-practices-in-agriculture-report/#commentsWed, 31 Jul 2013 22:22:08 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=409942OTTAWA – Canada is only hurting itself by maintaining high protectionist barriers on its agriculture sector, says a report which cites Canadian tariffs on agricultural imports as among the highest…

]]>OTTAWA – Canada is only hurting itself by maintaining high protectionist barriers on its agriculture sector, says a report which cites Canadian tariffs on agricultural imports as among the highest among food exporting nations.

The paper, from the Conference Board, notes that Canada has talked a good game about liberalized trade — particularly on launching free trade talks with major economies in Europe and Asia — but has not acted when it comes to the highly-protected agricultural sector.

The report argues there is a big potential payoff in freeing trade in food, particularly as Canada already exports significantly more food products than imports, by a ratio of about 60 to 40 per cent.

“The Canadian food industry can become more prosperous by serving fast-growing markets… and consumers benefit from a greater variety of food products at lower costs,” said Michael Burt, the director of industrial economic trends for the Ottawa-based think-tank.

“The only thing preventing Canada from gaining these benefits is ourselves.”

The report makes clear, however, that liberalizing trade would result in some losers as well as winners, with the highly protected dairy industry falling squarely in the former category.

“A (deal) between Canada and the European Union, with complete trade liberalization of the food sector, would lead to resources shifting from the production of milk and dairy to other segments such as grains, oilseeds and other processed food,” it explains.

“(Overall) as a result of a more efficient use of our resources, the food sector would see a significant increase in both output and exports,” the report concludes.

Agriculture is a key sticking point holding up a free trade agreement with the European Union, although sources suggest the impediment involves European barriers to imports of beef and pork from Canada.

Canada is believed to have agreed to lower tariffs on European cheese exports if a deal is finalized, but the federal government has insisted it will not sacrifice the supply-management regime that protects Quebec and Ontario dairy farmers.

Agriculture also figures to be one of the more difficult issues to crack in the TransPacific Partnership talks and negotiations with Japan, two other free trade fronts Canada has opened in an effort to diversify its exporting sector.

In an interview, Burt does not advocate unilaterally dropping tariffs, noting that other nations also protect their food sector. But says Canada’s walls are unusually high compared to other like nations that are significant net food exporters.

Through the controversial supply-management regime, Canada imposes 246.8 per cent tariffs on dairy imports. It also maintains high tariffs barriers on animal products (30.5 per cent); cereals and preparations (20.3 per cent) and even 10.4 per cent levies on coffee and tea.

Meanwhile, other net food exporting nations like Australia, New Zealand and Chile have chopped its tariffs to single-digits.

Canada fares better in a comparison that includes non-tariff barriers, although the report says that measure is more difficult to assess, since it is based on existing trade flows.

As well, the paper calculates that Canadian tariffs are comparable to the U.S. and the EU, although levels vary depending on the sector being protected.

But overall, Burt says Canada’s walls against food imports are too high, and in some cases — such as with wheat, barley, beef and veal — unnecessary.

The United States might be on the cusp of its sweetest bailout since banks and automakers scored federal dollars during the Great Recession. The Department of Agriculture could buy up to 400,000 tons of sugar from beleaguered producers, who have seen prices fall 18 per cent in the past five months after a bumper crop of sugar beets and cane, reports the Wall Street Journal. The bailout, which could come next month, would help processors avoid defaulting on government-funded loans worth $862 million—good news for the producers, but bad news for candy-makers and sweet-toothed consumers. Propping up prices for producers could mean more expensive trips to the supermarket.

Americans aren’t alone in protecting their sugar processors. Canada, like most other countries, slaps hefty duties on sugar to protect its big producers (and keep refined sugar prices up), and the industry complains about Europeans dumping excess, discounted sugar on the world market. Stateside, a CNBC blogger suggested that if the government stopped backing the industry, “the only thing most U.S. taxpayers would notice would be lower prices.” The excess of subsidized sugar flooding world markets suggests it is possible to have too much of a good thing.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/sweet-deal-sour-taste/feed/2Governments must address antibiotic use in farming: Ontario Medical Associationhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/governments-must-address-antibiotic-use-in-farming-ontario-medical-association/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/governments-must-address-antibiotic-use-in-farming-ontario-medical-association/#respondWed, 20 Mar 2013 16:26:04 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=362504TORONTO – The Ontario Medical Association wants the federal and provincial governments to crack down on antibiotic use in farming.
The organization is issuing a call to arms on the…

]]>TORONTO – The Ontario Medical Association wants the federal and provincial governments to crack down on antibiotic use in farming.

The organization is issuing a call to arms on the problem of antibiotic resistance, warning the world is in danger of losing these drugs because of misuse.

A policy paper drafted by the OMA says Ontario should ban the use of antibiotics as growth promoters in food animal production.

Farmers currently feed antibiotics to healthy animals both to prevent them from becoming ill and to accelerate growth.

Many more tonnes of the drugs are used in agricultural operations than in human medicine and experts say the practice is fuelling development of resistance.

OMA President Dr. Doug Weir says Canada has been slower off the mark to act to protect antibiotics than countries in Europe and the United States.

For instance, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has barred the disease prevention use of a class of antibiotics called cephalosporins in animal production, but the practice is not banned in Canada.

Weir says Canadians do not appear to understand that if antibiotic use isn’t curbed, the world faces a future in which some infections will be incurable.

“This is a serious problem. We have to take serious action,” Weir says.

The position paper suggests access to antibiotics for agricultural operations should be limited to cases where veterinarians write prescriptions for the drugs.

And both Ontario and the federal government should close legal loopholes that allow farmers to import large quantities of the drugs for use in their operations without surveillance or regulation.

On the human health side, the OMA suggests Ontario should establish an independent institution that would use the latest scientific evidence to advise doctors on when and how to best prescribe antibiotics for their patients.

The organization is also calling on the federal government to fund research and educational campaigns on the issue of antibiotic awareness.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/governments-must-address-antibiotic-use-in-farming-ontario-medical-association/feed/0A founder of the anti-GM food movement on how he got it wronghttp://www.macleans.ca/general/a-founder-of-the-anti-gm-food-movement-explains-how-he-got-it-wrong-all-wrong/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/a-founder-of-the-anti-gm-food-movement-explains-how-he-got-it-wrong-all-wrong/#commentsMon, 18 Mar 2013 11:25:00 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=359941Mark Lynas in conversation with Charlie Gillis

Mark Lynas used to be the kind of fire-breathing activist who sneaked onto test farms and destroyed genetically modified (GM) crops. Today, he’s one of Britain’s most respected science writers and an influential voice in the battle against climate change—winner of a coveted Royal Society Prize for his 2008 book, Six Degrees. In January, Lynas sent shockwaves through environmental circles by publicly apologizing for his role in launching the anti-GM movement. (GM is also referred to as to GMO, for “genetically modified organisms.”) “The GM debate is over,” he told Oxford University’s annual farming conference. “Three trillion meals eaten and there has never been a single substantiated case of harm.” Video of his speech went viral, and he’s been living with the backlash ever since.

Q:You’ve disavowed a cause you were identified with for decades. How are you feeling about your decision?

A: It’s been traumatic, but it’s also been something of a liberation. I’ve obviously been inconsistent in my life, but so are we all. In my view, it’s better to be inconsistent and half-right, than to be consistently wrong. Even the pope doesn’t claim these days to be infallible, yet that’s what most environmental groups do.

Q:Still, you’ve offended your former allies, a lot of whom are now trying to discredit you. Some say you exaggerated your part in founding the anti-GM movement to start with. What’s that been like on a personal level?

A: My whole social scene has been characterized by my environmentalism. I’m in a situation where I can go to a party and I don’t know who’s currently not speaking to me.

Q:On Twitter, Vandana Shiva, a prominent environmentalist in India, likened your calls for farmers to be able to plant GMOs to saying rapists should have the freedom to rape.

A: That was simply astonishing, and frankly, hurtful to people who have actually suffered the trauma of rape. Look, these attacks on me are obviously done in the interests of damage limitation. It’s sort of an emperor’s-new-clothes thing. I have helped expose the fact most people’s concerns about GM foods are based on mythology. Once you can get past the idea that there’s something inherently dangerous about GM foods, it’s a whole different conversation. We actually can tell whether GM foods are safe. They have been extensively tested hundreds and hundreds of times, using different techniques. Many of the tests were conducted independently. The jury is entirely in on this issue.

Q:Why did you choose this time and place to make your mea culpa?

A: I live in Oxford and I was invited. It wasn’t choreographed or preplanned in any way. I just got some ideas together and was asked to speak in a slot that emphasizes some freedom of thought and is meant to be provocative. It wasn’t as if I had a road-to-Damascus conversion, either. I have been developing these themes for several years, and I think this caught media headlines around the world because people [outside the U.K.] hadn’t heard of me before.

Q:You say this wasn’t an epiphany. Describe the intellectual and moral process that brought you to this point.

A: The process was really about familiarizing myself with the scientific evidence, and in fact, with an evidence-based world view in general. I got to that point by becoming less an environmental activist and more of a science writer through my work on climate change and having written two books on global warming. I’d been involved in countless debates with climate skeptics where I would be saying scientific evidence has to be the gold standard. Well, you don’t have to be a complete genius to figure out that scientific evidence is not with the anti-GM lobby. There is this mischaracterization of science, a sort of circular myth-building, at the heart of the anti-GMO cant.

Q:People are going to ask, though: if you admit you were massaging the truth then, how do we know you’re not massaging it now?

A. What I’ve done is difficult, and it’s why so few political leaders ever admit making a U-turn. They need to build up an aura of invincibility, and people’s belief in other people as leaders depends on this mirage. Fortunately that’s not something I’m interested in. This isn’t about me. It’s about the evidence and the truth.

Q.You argue that opposing GMOs is actually anti-environmental.

A. That was the realization that changed my mind. That recombinant DNA is actually a potentially very powerful technology for designing crop plants that can help humanity tackle our food-supply shortages, and also reduce our environmental footprint. They can help us use less fertilizer, and dramatically reduce pesticide applications. We can reduce our exposure to climate change through drought and heat-tolerant crops. So the potential is enormous.

Q:But even if one accepts that GMOs pose no threat to human health, is it not reasonable to worry about unintended consequences? If you make a crop that can’t be choked off by other plants, what might be the impact on the crop land or ecology of a given area?

A: It’s not reasonable, because all of those concerns would apply to any crop plant developed by humans—whether it’s done by genetic modification or conventional breeding. What’s so natural about mutagenesis, which creates a higher level of mutation of the genome through exposure to gamma radiation or mutagenic chemicals—then selects the mutations that confer a cultivation advantage? Conventional [plant] breeders have no idea what the impact is on the rest of the genome, or what allergens might have been created, because the results are not tested. They go straight into the food supply.

Q:You draw an interesting parallel between the denialism over global warming and denialism as it relates to GMOs. Both causes had been close to your heart. Did you reach a point where you had to choose between the two?

A: My overall effort has been to try to crash out an environmentalist perspective that is fully supported by evidence where there’s a scientific consensus. It’s interesting: the GM denialism seems to come from the left, and is particularly motivated by an anti-corporate world view; the climate-change denialism tends to come from the right and is motivated by suspicion of government.

Q:It strikes me that this is very much a story about the power of ideology—how it can blind people to the facts.

A: I agree, but you have to look at where the ideology is coming from, and why it’s so powerful and self-supporting. To my mind, anti-GM is a backward-looking, reactionary ideology, where you have a mythological, romanticized view of pre-industrialized agriculture being taken as the ideal. GM is seen as the opposite of that because it’s the epitome of technological and human progress in agriculture. So you have this collision of world views, where people who are fixated on doing things the old way simply cannot accept that you can even understand DNA, let alone work with it precisely and intentionally.

Q.The organic movement has staked a lot to anti-GM. Can it survive if the global public embraces GMOs?

A. The organic movement itself should embrace GM. The best applications of it mean that crops can be entirely pest-resistant by working in harmony with nature, which is after all what the organic movement is supposed to want. I don’t see any a priori reason why the organic movement accepts mutagenic crops and not GM crops. Ultimately it comes down to an aesthetic or even spiritual preference. We’re beyond a conversation where you can employ logic and science.

Q:So how do you think the organic movement should respond?

A: It’s a key test for them. Remember that most of what the organic movement has claimed is not true. Their food is not more nutritious. It’s not better for the environment. It’s not safer for human health. So what is left? You’re paying a premium for foods which, as Nina Fedoroff said on my blog, is a massive scam. That’s the recent board chair of the American Association for the Advancement of Science talking.

Q:Maybe it’s just a matter of time before you have a splinter group of organic farmers willing work with GM crops.

A: I don’t know. My father is an organic farmer in north Wales and has been asking the Soil Association, the U.K.’s organic certification body, why he can’t grow a blight-resistant GM potato. It wouldn’t need to be sprayed with fungicide, and he could grow potatoes in wet years and not lose the entire crop. They can’t come up with any logical reason why.

Q:Do you eat organic food?

A: I try to avoid it, but my wife keeps buying it.

Q.Why do you avoid it?

A. Partly through bloody-mindedness. Partly because I object to paying more for something that is worse for the environment. And partly because I was shocked about the food contamination and health impacts—you know, the E.coli outbreak in Germany in 2011. I wouldn’t eat organic bean sprouts without giving them a thorough boiling.

Q.It would be easy for you to become a poster boy for genetically modified agriculture.

A. I’m no one’s poster boy, and I’m very careful about distinguishing myself from any industry lobbies. I don’t even speak on the same panels as industry people. For me this is a much wider struggle to reconcile environmentalism, which has so much good about it, with the reality of scientific evidence.

]]>In 2010, when Ottawa blocked Australia’s BHP Billiton’s purchase of Potash Corp., the business was booming. Prices for the fertilizer seemed to be ever rising along with global demand. After BHP’s bid was rejected (on the grounds it wouldn’t be of net benefit to Canada), the company made plans to open its own $14-billion mine in Saskatchewan. Potash mining worldwide ramped up.

But now the industry is experiencing a major hangover, with overcapacity and falling prices. Potash now sells at $425 per tonne, nearly half its peak price of $860 in 2009. Last month, Potash Corp. temporarily closed two Canadian mines for eight weeks, affecting 600 workers. BHP may be forced to halt construction of its new mine; one Bank of Montreal analyst noted that new capacity won’t be needed “for at least another decade.”

Despite falling prices, many farmers view potash as a luxury they can’t afford. In India, demand has dried up as farmers turn to cheaper alternatives like nitrogen-based urea. Executives remain hopeful, citing a deal this month between Canpotex Ltd., North America’s biggest potash seller, and China’s Sinofert Holdings Ltd. Even so, that deal is for $70 less per tonne than the last contract between the two firms, signed in March.

A fledgling company in southern Alberta is sending drone technology originally designed for the military into the sky to take pictures of sugar beets, potatoes and even cattle in an effort to help farmers better manage their crops and livestock. The unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) used by Lethbridge-based Isis Geomatics can fit in a backpack when disassembled and, when launched, use cameras to tag each part of a field with an exact location. A farmer can then scan the images to determine where to apply water or fertilizer or keep track of cattle.

Agriculture is just one emerging commercial application for UAVs. Drones, such as those manufactured at Waterloo, Ont.-based Aeryon Labs, are becoming easy enough for anyone to operate; they’ve been used so far for wildlife surveys and to map shipping routes. Isis hopes to add oil- and gas-field surveying to its services. Other firms are planning to use drones as super-efficient couriers in remote areas. “People are recognizing the opportunities,” says Aeryon Labs’ vice-president of marketing, Ian McDonald.

In agricultural applications, the drones are part of a trend toward precision agriculture: using technology to reduce costs and maximize yields. The UAVs that Isis employs are a huge improvement on the field surveys CEO Steve Myshak used while studying geography at the University of Lethbridge. Some of the methods “were pretty archaic—using boom trucks and scaffolding and cranes,” he says. Myshak partnered with classmate Owen Brown to launch Isis in June.

Business has been better than expected, but there are challenges—among them the high cost of UAVs. An Aeryon Scout, the type Isis uses, is $60,000, making UAVs cost-effective for high-value crops only. In southern Alberta, this means sugar beets, potatoes and seed canola. “As it gets cheaper and some of the farmers adopt the technology, it will be more common,” says Myshak. “Right now, the price point is so high and the technology is so new that they don’t really understand how it can help them.” Aeryon’s McDonald expects to see more service providers like Isis enter the market before farmers buy their own drones.

Users also need permits from Transport Canada, and there are restrictions on flights. In the U.S., regulations are even tighter. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) only grants permits for UAVs to colleges, but some American entrepreneurs see the potential and are partnering with public agencies to test their designs. Young Kim, general manager of Bosh Precision Agriculture in Virginia, hopes UAVs will be approved for civil applications in 2015, with police and firefighters getting initial permits. Agriculture could follow, he hopes, mainly because it doesn’t face the safety and privacy concerns present in urban centres. “We’re all out in rural areas and we’re going to be flying over flat terrain without a lot of man-made obstacles,” he says.

Once the technology is approved, the possibilities are endless. Two U.S. companies are currently testing technology to create a “matternet,” a kind of physical Internet that would use UAVs to quickly deliver small packages such as urgent medications or blood test results between various points. Such a system could be used in remote areas, or in developing countries with poor infrastructure. But those applications are years away and, until the FAA loosens its regulations, American UAV entrepreneurs are stuck in a holding pattern.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/military-drones-put-to-good-use/feed/4Prairie farmers ask for government help getting hay to Ontario and Quebechttp://www.macleans.ca/general/prairie-farmers-ask-for-government-help-getting-hay-to-ontario-and-quebec/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/prairie-farmers-ask-for-government-help-getting-hay-to-ontario-and-quebec/#commentsThu, 13 Sep 2012 00:54:06 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=292914WHITEHORSE – A move is afoot to get hay from the Prairies to drought-stricken parts of Ontario and Quebec.
The HayEast 2012 program consists of farm and livestock groups from…

]]>WHITEHORSE – A move is afoot to get hay from the Prairies to drought-stricken parts of Ontario and Quebec.

The HayEast 2012 program consists of farm and livestock groups from Alberta and Saskatchewan working in partnership with the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, Mennonite Disaster Services and the Quebec Farmers’ Association.

The program was announced Wednesday afternoon during the Canadian Federation of Agriculture roundtable at the federal, provincial and territorial agriculture ministers’ meeting in Whitehorse.

Mark Wales, president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, says there is a pressing need and farmers in Alberta and Saskatchewan are offering to help.

But he says the program also requires the support of the federal and provincial governments, the railways, corporate partners and other stakeholders.

Wales specifically called on the federal government to provide support in the form of public relations, logistics and the triggering of AgriRecovery funds.

He said the first step, however, in calculating the true scope of the problem and its solution is to establish a database of producers in need and the size of their herds.

Meanwhile, staff and executive from a number of farm organizations are already meeting with provincial agriculture ministry officials, corporate partners, trucking companies, railway officials and others to begin co-ordinating the various agencies and processes required to ensure HayEast 2012’s eventual success.

Norm Hall, president of the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan, one of the western farm and livestock groups working to co-ordinate the 2012 program, remembers what it was like for Saskatchewan producers to be on the receiving end of hay assistance.

“In 2002, eastern farmers shipped us thousands of bales of hay to help save our herds from starvation,” Hall said. “It’s 10 years later and the time has come for us to give back to the people who helped us when we needed it.

“As we head into the final stretches of harvest across much of Saskatchewan and start turning our thoughts towards Thanksgiving, it’s time for all of us to take a moment to think of those less fortunate than ourselves.”

HayEast 2012 organizers will look for assistance from those involved in Hay West’s successful efforts.

“In 2002, we assisted Hay West with distribution of hay throughout Alberta,” said Bruce Banks, CEO of the 4-H Foundation of Alberta. “We witnessed the generosity of our eastern neighbours in helping Alberta livestock producers and the difference it made, and we are eager to assist in any way to be able to give back to our eastern friends.”

Lynn Jacobson, president of Wild Rose Agricultural Producers in Alberta, is confident that western Prairie farmers will do what it takes to help livestock producers in eastern Canada.

“The online forums are already filled with farmers and their urban cousins lining up to help with second cuts or stored hay – or even cash,” he said. “We have long memories here in Alberta and we’re proud to be able to help.”

Farmers’ costs will go up, for such things as administering cash advances and financing grain payments on delivery. Farmers will also have to pick up part of the tab for initial payment guarantees. Logistically, without the Wheat Board as a watchdog, grain companies and the railways are now in full control of the handling and transportation system. They have no incentive to service farmer-owned terminals, community-based short-lines or producer-loaded rail cars. There’s no one in the system with either the will or the clout to challenge excessive rates or charges.

Internationally, without the Board, Canada’s distinctive “brand” in world grain markets is slashed. This is compounded by the totally predictable sell-off of domestic firms like Viterra to foreign commodity traders like Glencore. With the Wheat Board out of the way, global grain buyers expect they’ll get Canadian grain at cheaper prices. Value-added processers expect the same. Railways and grain companies expect to extract higher margins. If that’s all true, you can imagine who gets stuck with the short-end of the stick.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/goodbye-to-all-that-2/feed/14North America’s corn belt is baking, and everyone is about to feel the burnhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/world/withering-in-the-heat/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/withering-in-the-heat/#commentsMon, 23 Jul 2012 15:00:01 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=275318The worst draught in a quarter-century is threatening the global food supply

Fred Below has never grown corn in hell, but this summer he’s gotten a sense of what it might be like. “Your crop would be burning up,” he surmises in Midwest deadpan, “and you’d be telling the Devil, ‘Man, we need rain bad.’ ” A crop biologist with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Below is given to neither blasphemy nor idle humour. In recent weeks, he’s watched with dismay as the corn he grows on four research farms throughout the state has curled and shrank in the face of a seemingly infernal heat wave.

As his crops go, so does the great North American corn belt. Grappling with the worst drought in a quarter-century, farmers in the normally verdant lands stretching from Nebraska to southern Ontario are looking ahead to a harvest bust, as the stalks in their fields fade to yellow and nod toward the earth. Under the husks, the kernels have shrivelled to rubbery grains, meaning that the quality of the surviving corn is declining, even as maize prices soared this week toward a record US$8 a bushel.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture cut its overall forecast of America’s harvest by 12 per cent, noting that three-quarters of the country’s corn-producing land sits in a drought zone where as little as 10 mm of rain has fallen since early June. In Illinois, as much as a third of the crop could be lost, says Below, and even a sudden dose of moisture won’t turn things around. The heat struck during a critical period in plant development, he explains, desiccating pollen just as the transfer process was about to begin. “Right now, we’re setting the potential number of kernels on the plant,” he says. “During that period, hot and dry are as bad a set of conditions as can be.”

The impact will be felt beyond the farm belt, say experts, because few agricultural commodities permeate the food supply as completely as corn. Over the past three decades, the crop has become the wellspring of the Western diet, serving as the ballast in our breakfast cereals, the sweetener of our soft drinks and—increasingly—fodder for the growing number of cattle we turn into steaks. When the price of corn rises, everyone gets pinched.

That doesn’t count the fancy-grade stuff we put on the table—a cash crop Ontario farmers were scrambling to rescue this week as temperatures rocketed to 37° C, and rain remained a tantalizing rumour. In Scotland, Ont., about 125 km southwest of Toronto, workers at the Welsh Bros. Corn Farm were draining their irrigation ponds to keep the sweet corn alive, knowing their efforts would go for naught if the dugouts weren’t replenished. As of Tuesday, the weather station in nearby Simcoe had recorded just 1.3 mm of precipitation since Canada Day. “We’re seeing damage to the crop and I’m expecting yields to go down,” said co-owner Peter Welsh. “I haven’t seen it this bad in my life.”

How widely—and keenly—the pain will be felt is a matter of debate. Michael Swanson, an agricultural economist with Wells Fargo & Co., has described the shortage as “a US$50-billion event” for the U.S. economy, noting that corn prices had climbed some 46 per cent above their mid-June levels. The spike came, he notes, just as consumers were expecting a break from a longer-term rise in food prices connected to overseas demand and the world’s increasing fondness for corn-fed meat. Global economic uncertainty had eased those pressures, says Swanson, but the relief was short-lived. “We are already at record-high prices for proteins and dairies,” he says. “Lower income consumers will really feel the impact of higher corn prices.”

Others, however, aren’t ready to hit the panic button. Sylvain Charlebois, a University of Guelph economist who has studied world food prices, points out that less American corn is going to ethanol production this summer, after Congress ended a 12-cent-per-litre tax credit for fuel makers last winter. The world economy remains in neutral, he adds, which could hold down demand for meat and dairy products. “American consumers are really struggling,” Charlebois says, “and when it comes to meat and proteins, I’m not so sure they’re willing to pay more. If they believe beef is too expensive, they’re probably going to trade down to chicken or pork. There are lots of substitutes out there.”

Still, he hastens to add, the drought points out a new reality faced by consumers and farmers: volatile markets trying to come to grips with capricious climate conditions—a combination that, for Kevin Miles of Waterford, Ont., has begun to feel like Fred Below’s special version of hell. Last year, he lost much of his corn to a record deluge of spring rain. This summer, the clouds keep bypassing the 50-year-old’s 647 hectares of crop land, raising the prospect of another subpar yield. “It’s in a farmer’s nature to like to watch stuff grow,” Miles says ruefully. “Seeing it die instead, right in front of you, is not much fun.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/withering-in-the-heat/feed/1Martha Hall Findlay Maverick Watchhttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/martha-hall-findlay-maverick-watch/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/martha-hall-findlay-maverick-watch/#commentsThu, 21 Jun 2012 16:35:48 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=269518Perhaps on the eve of another leadership run, former Liberal MP Martha Hall Findlay calls for an end to supply management.Dairy farms are governed by a byzantine system that …

]]>Perhaps on the eve of another leadership run, former Liberal MP Martha Hall Findlay calls for an end to supply management.

Dairy farms are governed by a byzantine system that prices milk based on intended usage, locks out most foreign products with exorbitantly high tariffs and even determines how much farmers can produce. Everyone suffers. First in the line of people harmed by supply management are consumers – Canadians are forced to pay two to three times as much for whole milk as Americans.

It is simply untenable that Canadian families pay upwards of $300 more a year than they need to, for milk alone, let alone higher prices for other products like cheese, yogourt and ice cream, to subsidize a tiny number of relatively well-off farmers. Worse, it’s regressive, which means that the ones who suffer most are the low-income families – the very ones who most need affordable access to nutrition. Many others, including processors and restaurants, have been calling to an end to supply management for years.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/martha-hall-findlay-maverick-watch/feed/33No, the Wheat Board’s not in the Constitutionhttp://www.macleans.ca/authors/colby-cosh/no-the-wheat-boards-not-in-the-constitution/
http://www.macleans.ca/authors/colby-cosh/no-the-wheat-boards-not-in-the-constitution/#commentsSat, 25 Feb 2012 17:54:49 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=242247Because it’s a little difficult to find on the Web, I’ve uploaded a PDF copy of the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench decision on the former CWB directors’ application for…

]]>Because it’s a little difficult to find on the Web, I’ve uploaded a PDF copy of the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench decision on the former CWB directors’ application for an injunction against the demise of single-desk wheat and barley marketing. It contains setbacks within setbacks for the directors’ case: their constitutional argument that the dismantling of the single desk violated the rule of law isn’t serious enough to be considered, says Justice Shane Perlmutter, and even if it were, it doesn’t meet the urgency test for injunctive relief. Perlmutter’s take is, needless to say, very different from Federal Court Justice Douglas Campbell’s.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/authors/colby-cosh/no-the-wheat-boards-not-in-the-constitution/feed/5Day one at the AAAS conference in Vancouverhttp://www.macleans.ca/society/science/day-one-at-the-aaas-conference-in-vancouver/
http://www.macleans.ca/society/science/day-one-at-the-aaas-conference-in-vancouver/#respondFri, 17 Feb 2012 16:58:18 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=240675New research emerges about Stonehenge's auditory magic and how to grow food in the desert

Kate Lunau is covering the 2012 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Vancouver, a gathering of some of the world’s finest brains and celebrities of science. On Feb. 16-20, Lunau will bring you a sneak peak of the latest research and findings, posting to Macleans.ca on anything from healthcare and climate change, to food security, and more. Follow her on Twitter: @Katelunau, #AAAS, #AAASmtg and read her intro here:Introducing the world’s biggest Science Fest

Vancouver was rainy but warm on Thursday as people started piling into the Convention Centre for the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, one of the biggest gatherings of scientific minds anywhere (there’s about 8,000 people here). They’ve come from all over: I met visitors from Singapore, Hawaii, Ireland, across the U.S. and Puerto Rico, some saying they’d expected Canada to be a lot colder and snowier. Some are here presenting new research, but many are just interested in the science–or networking: I overheard one woman describing her start-up business in “wireless toilets.”

The meeting had yet to get into full swing on Thursday, but new research was already being announced: for example, this incredible bit on a new theory about Stonehenge, and how it may have been built to create a certain kind of mysterious, auditory illusion. That work will be fully presented later today, and I’m hoping to go.There’s a lot of talk about how it’s the first time in 30 years this meeting has been held in Canada—the AAAS is, after all, the American Association for the Advancement of Science—and Thursday’s opening ceremony was heavy on Canadian content, starting with a traditional blessing from two representatives of the Coast Salish First Nations. Andrew Petter of Simon Fraser University, Stephen J. Toope of the University of British Columbia, and Neil Turok of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics are all co-chairs–each took the stage to discuss the meeting’s theme, the global knowledge society. Nina Fedoroff, AAAS president and a renowned geneticist and biologist, gave the final address of the night, discussing her efforts to grow crops in the desert landscape of Saudi Arabia, which has important implications for the world food supply of the future, as the temperature warms and fresh water becomes more scarce. At a reception afterwards, Governor General David Johnston welcomed the crowd as the massive blue Olympic Cauldron was lit behind him.

After the opening ceremony had wrapped up, journalists were packed on a shuttle bus and taken off to the Vancouver Aquarium to drink wine and snack on finger foods surrounded by glowing fish and jellies, a setting that felt appropriately surreal.

From the 21st Maclean’s University Rankings, on newsstands now. Story by Jason McBride

This past September, New Brunswick’s Mount Allison University held an event unprecedented in its 172-year-long history: a you-pick potato harvest. For the first five Saturdays of the new school year, students and Sackville residents were able to pick Russet and Superior potatoes from a boggy, 9.7-hectare farm in the heart of the campus. The rest of the spud harvest—a yield of 30,000 pounds—was transformed, to the delight of many ravenous undergrads, into fresh, hand-cut french fries and mashed potatoes in the kitchen at Jennings Hall.

The Mount Allison Farm had lain fallow for half a century before Michelle Strain, a gardener and the university’s director of administrative services, revived it this past spring in response to student demand for more fresh, local produce. Strain and her small team sought advice and borrowed equipment from nearby farmers, and received a guarantee from chef Tom Burrell, who runs the dining hall, to buy as much “homegrown”—as the chef calls it with a wink—produce as they could. Third-year anthropology student Heidi Goodine was one of two Mount A students who spent the past summer amending the soil, planting, watering and weeding—all by hand. Menaced by switchgrass, ferocious mosquitoes and relentless rain, the small crew (along with about 100 volunteers) produced a surprisingly large bounty—not just potatoes, but lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, carrots and green beans. “It was really exciting to see everything blooming and coming out of the ground,” Goodine says. “The weather was so poor we didn’t know if anything would grow.”

Mount A’s farm is just one of many agricultural projects sprouting on Canadian university campuses, often in unexpected places and reflective of a growing cultural obsession with knowing where our food comes from. The University of Manitoba recently opened the Bruce D. Campbell Farm and Food Discovery Centre, the first such facility in Western Canada, and the University of Windsor’s Campus Community Garden Project, which began in January 2010, nurtures connections between school and city through several communal garden plots. Concordia’s Loyola City Farm School Project, a pilot project now in its final phase, is a hands-on urban agriculture training program.

In Fields of Learning: The Student Farm Movement in North America, a collection of essays out this fall, co-editor Laura Sayre argues that student farms “may be essential in preparing our nation and our planet to become part of the food revolution of the 21st century.” As climate change, food-safety fears and declining natural resources make large-scale industrial agriculture increasingly unsustainable, smaller, more nimble and often experimental operations—precisely the kind of farms found on university campuses—and the experience and knowledge to run them, have become even more vital.

Fields of Learning devotes a full chapter to the University of British Columbia Farm, an enterprise founded in 1910 when the school’s commissioners counted on an inevitable agricultural future. While such a future didn’t quite pan out, the 24-hectare*, student-driven model farm has remained an important educational laboratory. Part of UBC’s faculty of land and food systems, it serves as an outdoor classroom comprised of cultivated field areas, greenhouses, a heritage orchard, teaching gardens and chicken coops, all ringed by 90-year-old coastal hemlock forest. More than 2,500 students participate in farm activities each year, with 1,500 obtaining academic credit for their work in 60 different courses, from evolutionary biology to neuroscience. The UBC Farm Practicum in Sustainable Agriculture, which launched in 2008, is an eight-month experiential learning program designed for aspiring farmers. It accepts 10 students a year, and receives five times that number of applicants.

“I’ve seen an interest in farming that really didn’t exist a decade ago,” says Mark Bomford, the farm’s director. As at other universities, most of the interest is coming from students who have little or no farming experience, and who have grown up in urban environments. These students, Bomford says, are increasingly concerned about the health and security of their food, and are also looking for meaningful, fulfilling careers. “UBC Farm allows them to understand the challenges, the long hours and insecurity, of farming,” he adds, “while still keeping one foot in the city.”

UBC Farm has overcome many obstacles in its 100-year history—funding shortfalls, encroaching student housing—and, like other traditional agricultural programs, has had to reinvent and rebrand itself. The Ontario Agriculture College at the University of Guelph, one of the oldest such educational institutions in the country, added a degree-level organic agriculture program in 2004, the first of its kind in North America. In March of this year, it appointed a new chair in sustainable food production, another Canadian first, bankrolled by Loblaw. “We’ve had a long record of excellence,” says Martha Gay Scroggins, who has run the Guelph Centre for Urban Organic Farming program since 2008, “and to maintain that integrity, we’ve had to update, be more inclusive, incorporate sustainability.”

But farming, even on campus, has always been tough. The organic agriculture major was threatened by budget cuts and low enrolment in 2009, but after chefs and other foodies rallied around the cause, the program was given a one-year reprieve, which was extended to 2014 after new courses were added and others were merged or cancelled. Current enrolment is just 20, but Scroggins says she’s seen enrolment in individual courses by non-majors triple since she arrived.

Asked where this interest and enthusiasm is coming from, she says simply, “Survival.” More than ever, she argues, people need to learn self-reliance and how to grow their own food responsibly—for themselves, their families and their communities.

Mount A’s Martha Strain puts it a bit more buoyantly: “It’s just kinda neat to get dirty.”

Where they grow their own

For students who like to get their hands dirty (or at least benefit from the bounty), the following schools have community gardens or campus farms:

The UBC Farm is a 24-hectare learning and research farm that grows 250 varieties of vegetables, herbs, flowers and small fruits. Accepts volunteers. Produce sold through weekly markets, to Vancouver restaurants, and a Community Shared Agriculture box program.

The Guelph Centre for Urban Organic Farming is a 2.5-hectare certified organic farm. Accepts volunteers (who receive veggies as pay). Produce sold on-site and through on-campus market and donated to the U of Guelph Child Care and Learning Centre.

Concordia University’s Loyola City Farm is about half a hectare that hosts several small-scale agricultural projects. Accepts volunteers. Harvest donated to local food charities, including the People’s Potato, a vegan soup kitchen.

The University of Windsor Campus Community Garden Project is a small collection of garden beds that grow various vegetables, herbs and fruit. Accepts volunteers. Produce shared between volunteers and charities in Windsor and Essex County.

The Mount Allison Farm grows potatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes and other vegetables on about 10 hectares. Accepts volunteers. All produce given to volunteers and sold to the university’s dining hall.

*An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the size of the UBC Farm.

]]>Barrie McKenna explores the government’s attempt to support both the free market (when it comes to the Canadian Wheat Board) and supply management (when it comes to dairy farmers).

If open markets are so clearly in the best interests of grain farmers in Western Canada, why aren’t they also good for the dairy farmers of Quebec and Ontario? The answer, of course, is politics in a country where rural areas are still overly represented in the House of Commons. Supply management has become a proxy for rural entitlement and protection of family farms – a message that helped the Conservatives to a sweep outside the major cities in Southern Ontario in the May election. And by retaining the regime, Mr. Harper presumably calculates he will keep those seats four years from now.

There is no sound economic or policy rationale for keeping supply management. The government is sacrificing the interests of 34 million Canadians for the sake of fewer than 15,000 dairy and poultry farmers … Every year the distortions caused by the system grow larger. Canadians may not realize it when they go to the grocery store, but they’re paying twice the world average for dairy products – and up to three times what Americans pay. That’s a hidden $3-billion a year tax on all of us.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/milk-management-fee/feed/19The Canadian Wheat Board and everything afterhttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-canadian-wheat-board-and-everything-after/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-canadian-wheat-board-and-everything-after/#commentsTue, 18 Oct 2011 17:02:00 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=220463The five-part act to reform the Canadian Wheat Board, as tabled today, is here.
The Harper government has prepared a series of backgrounders and an FAQ to explain it all.…

]]>A majority of voters in a plebiscite have voted to maintain the Canadian Wheat Board’s monopsony.

A total of 62 per cent of prairie wheat growers – 22,764 farmers – voted to keep the monopoly versus 38 per cent – 14,059 farmers – who voted to eliminate the monopoly and be able to sell their wheat on the open market.

Just over half of barley growers – 51 per cent – voted to maintain the monopoly compared to 49 per cent who voted to eliminate it. The vote was held by mail-in ballot of farmers in the CWB area including Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. Turnout in the referendum was 56 per cent for wheat growers, 47 per cent for barley growers and 60 per cent for farmers who grew both.

The government responded last night with a note entitled “Statement from Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz on the Result of the Expensive Survey.”

“Our Government’s top priority is the economy in which the agriculture industry plays a vital role.

“We know that an open market will attract investment, encourage innovation and create value-added jobs.

“In an open market, every farmer will have the ability to choose how to market their grain, whether it’s individually or through a voluntary pooling entity.

“Let me repeat – every western Canadian grain farmer will have the right to choose how they market their grain just like farmers in the rest of Canada and around the world.

“No expensive survey can trump the individual right of farmers to market their own grain.

“Our Government is committed to giving Western Canadian grain farmers the marketing freedom they want and deserve.”

]]>Four students from the University of Guelph have been named the “Best Student Weed Scientists in North America.” They won the gold medal at the 2011 Weed Olympics held in Knoxville, Tenn. earlier this summer, beating out 17 other schools, according to the university. Among other tests of their skills, the Ontario Agricultural College (OAC) students had to identify over 100 weed species and discern an herbicide from a list of 30. Guelph was the only Canadian school to compete.

]]>Using the qualifier “natural” to sell food to a hungry public is nothing new. But mass-market food advertisers have recently taken the strategy to new heights by getting the people that actually grow the food to sell it, too. A new McDonald’s television ad, which opens with a farmer carrying a bushel of potatoes, drives home the idea that their fries are made with the same potatoes you mash at home. Wendy’s new TV ads show farmer Jim Carter eating the strawberries he grows that end up in the fast-food chain’s new salad. And the latest Lay’s ad campaign features the potato farmers who provide the produce for the company’s chips. (They also include a “chip tracker” on their website, where customers can enter a product code found on bags in order to find out exactly where the potatoes inside were harvested.) The underlying message seems to be, “Our food is made with food. And it’s grown by real farmers.”

“They’re iconic,” says Alan Middleton, a professor of marketing at the Schulich Executive Education Centre at York University. “We believe farmers are good people, unless you’re in the Prairies, in which case you know they’re businessmen just like everybody else, but we have this iconic view of rural romanticism.” Middleton also cites a growing interest in local food and an increasing awareness that “healthiness and weight aren’t just about exercising and not eating; they’re about the right kind of eating.”

“The whole movement,” he adds, “is growing massively and marketers are onto it.” Perhaps more importantly, the ads are a reaction from a fast-food industry that has come under intense criticism in recent years from health lobby groups and even governments and school systems. If food makers, who spent $11.3 billion in the U.S. last year selling their products, can at least plant the idea that their food isn’t some concoction cooked up in a lab, they might be able to gain public support to help fend off critics.

Using farmers, often rustically clad in overalls in the middle of their idyllic fields, to do the hawking is savvy, but it might not be enough to convince an ever-suspecting audience that mass-produced food is good for them.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/society/life/pitchmen-with-pitchforks/feed/0The Russians are cominghttp://www.macleans.ca/society/life/the-russians-are-coming/
http://www.macleans.ca/society/life/the-russians-are-coming/#commentsThu, 11 Aug 2011 13:55:46 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=207435Field studies are under way to see if a foreign weed—a dandelion—could become a source of rubber and cash

In southwestern Ontario, in the middle of farm country, there’s a field that appears to have a major weed problem—but they’re not your typical garden-variety weeds. They’re Russian dandelions, and scientists believe they hold the answer to a seldom-discussed problem: the mounting worldwide shortage of natural rubber, a material that comes from a single tree (the Hevea brasiliensis—a.k.a. the Brazilian rubber tree), grown almost exclusively in one region (Southeast Asia), and which is crucial to our tire market. “We don’t view it as a strategic commodity like oil,” says the University of Guelph’s David Wolyn, one of a handful of Canadian scientists working to create natural rubber from the dandelions. “But there are 800 million cars on the road. Where’s all that rubber going to come from?”

The rubber-bearing properties of the Russian dandelion—which is actually endemic to Kazakhstan—have been known to Western scientists since the Second World War, when the U.S. was forced to search for an alternative source of rubber after the Axis powers seized control of the world supply. While synthetic rubber proved a useful substitute, it didn’t have the necessary chemical properties to completely replace natural rubber in tires, and it was entirely unsuitable for the heavy-duty tires of large vehicles, such as airplanes and military transports. (The general rule remains today: the larger the tire, the more natural rubber it requires.) However, research showed that the rubber fibres contained in the roots of Russian dandelions could serve as a viable—and domestic—alternative for these critical applications. When the war ended, the cheap source of rubber became available again and the science was shelved.

Now, precarious conditions affecting this US$20-billion market have hastened the retrieval of that decades-old research. Rapid development throughout China and India has caused demand for natural rubber to spike. Not only is supply failing to meet demand, it’s shrinking, as rubber farmers switch to more economical crops, particularly palm oil trees, and skilled rubber tappers migrate to the cities. Scientists also suspect climate change is altering growing conditions in Southeast Asia, resulting in poorer rubber harvests. As natural rubber prices have increased fivefold over the last decade, reaching an all-time high this April, and analysts estimate the global stockpile of tires at just 69 days’ worth of demand, efforts to cultivate the Russian dandelion are energizing. “It’s the best candidate we have to replace the Hevea tree,” says an industry expert who works with Penra, a U.S. consortium of scientists studying the dandelion and funded by government agencies and corporations such as Ford and Bridgestone. “It’s entirely feasible it can satisfy the North American market.”

Whereas the U.S. considers natural rubber a strategic resource, in Canada, “it’s not on the radar,” says Guelph’s Wolyn, a plant breeder who received a $143,500 community development grant to begin improving the dandelions’ rubber yield. He’s planted 2,000 seeds obtained from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Kok Technology—a dandelion-rubber processing upstart in Vancouver—and the plants are currently growing at the university’s test field. In the fall, he’ll select the plants that contain the most rubber and transport them to a controlled greenhouse where he can pollinate them, either with flies or by hand. With the resulting seed, he’ll restart the process, each time breeding only the most promising plants. Ultimately, Wolyn hopes to create a high-rubber-yielding seed that farmers could use.

Meanwhile, colleagues at the University of Guelph, the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, and Université Laval in Quebec City work on the agronomics side, essentially figuring out how to turn a foreign weed into a Canadian cash crop. With help from the 1940s data, they’re determining optimal fertilizer mixes, irrigation systems and planting methods; plus there’s the tricky task of finding a herbicide that will kill weeds without harming the one they’re trying to grow. And all the researchers must adhere to Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) regulations.

In compliance with CFIA rules, Université Laval’s Martin Trépanier has to pluck off by hand any yellow flowers that appear throughout his test plot of dandelions to ensure the plants don’t spread beyond the field—an impossible job on a commercial-scale farm. “I think if the plant had a different name it would be better. But everybody’s afraid of ‘dandelions,’ ” says Trépanier, who, along with his colleagues, is waiting to learn whether the CFIA will lift its restrictions. “If the regulations don’t change, this will never happen in Canada.”

However, as analysts predict tire prices to soar 32 per cent by December, demand for rubber may trump any fear of a foreign invasion of dandelions.

In the new China, everything is big. Drive south on the wide highway from Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, and for hours you will see field after field of vegetables with farmers stooped over crops, and pass trucks, motorized tricycles and bikes overflowing with fresh cabbages, onions and greens. This farmland outside Kunming is one of dozens of vast agricultural areas in the country that grow about half of all the world’s vegetables, an increasing number of which are now certified organic. Over the past 10 years, China has converted millions of hectares to organic agriculture—between 2005 and 2006, the amount of organically managed land went up more than tenfold. Today, China has more organic land than any other country, positioning it to be the world’s largest organic producer.

This potential to grow a lot in one place is what motivated Gary Lloyd to look to China in 2000 to source organic peas, spinach and other produce. Lloyd’s company freezes and packages the produce on behalf of other brands that then sell it under their own names at supermarkets in Canada and the United States. He was one of many who saw opportunity in China’s rapidly growing organic export industry—today, Canadians eat a wide range of organic produce from China. The country supplies one-third of all the green peas we eat, both conventional and organic, and much of our apple juice.

But while organic agriculture is big in China, so too are tainted food scandals—think melamine in milk and, more recently, exploding watermelons—and now concerns about food safety in the country are starting to push production back to Canada. Chinese exports of organic fruits and vegetables may be on the rise, but the question is, how long will they continue to be?

It makes sense from an economic perspective for companies to ship organic vegetables here from the other side of the planet because they can still make a profit. “Vegetables traditionally are labour intensive,” explained Brian Revell, professor of agriculture and food economics who studies the country at Harper Adams University College in Shropshire. And organic vegetables are doubly so because chemicals such as herbicides are often replaced with hand weeding. In Canada, those labour costs can push the price of organic produce way up, so with cheap labour there is a payoff.

A Dutch company was the first to see the business opportunity, and in the early 1990s started producing tea without pesticides and synthetic fertilizers on a commercial scale in China. Export organics grew and quickly spread to pumpkin and sunflower seeds; a number of organizations began to offer organic certification that met international standards, such as our own, so the food could be sold in Canadian supermarkets. That’s why you can buy organic ketchup made from Chinese tomatoes that bears the USDA logo. And why that ketchup can be so cheap.

It’s also why the arrival of inexpensive Chinese organics in Australia has been called a crisis by farmers who now compete with a 42 per cent rise in fresh vegetable imports from that country. There are no definitive numbers here on organic imports from China; Statistics Canada started tracking them in 2007, but not all foods are captured by the system. However, producers can look to what happened when inexpensive Chinese products such as apple juice and garlic began flooding the market, running many Canadian farmers out of business and prompting many local apple growers to tear out their trees.

However, organics in China are different. Whereas the organic food movement in North America (and Europe) grew out of a grassroots interest in producing environmentally friendly foods for a community, in China organics has been about business from the start. Farmland is communally owned, so a foreign business, often working with a Chinese agent, will approach a village council and propose a farming arrangement. After a community vote, the entire village contracts with the company to supply the agricultural product. The farmers agree to use the seeds and other inputs the foreign company provides, but they’re not motivated by any romantic notions of farming sustainably.

Still, experts say, while food safety issues have hounded China’s domestic food industry, these export crops are part of a separate food system. The vegetables sold in China by the old-fashioned fruit and vegetable sellers at wet markets as well as at the modern, international supermarkets all come from the country’s network of wholesale markets, said Scott Rozelle, a professor at Stanford who studies Chinese agricultural policy and markets. However, vegetables headed abroad are monitored along the food chain: farmers grow the organic vegetables on plots of land that are often less than an acre, then bring the harvest, usually by hand-pulled cart, to a company processing plant, where it is inspected. Plant employees, who tend to be women whose husbands have left for factories on the east coast, wash and prepare the vegetables—all by hand. Before leaving the factory, the vegetables are put through a double metal detector. “They do a great job,” said Lloyd. “We never have had a problem in China.”

“The Chinese are super careful,” echoed Rozelle. The vegetables destined for foreign supermarkets are inspected by government employees before they leave the country. “They know if they get to the port and find residues, it will be rejected.”

Nevertheless, concern about the quality of organics doesn’t come out of nowhere. When melamine was found in milk after the Beijing Olympics, the scandal drew international headlines. To this day, stories of tainted and poisoned foods remain a regular occurrence in China. In April, several Guangdong noodle factories were shut down after they were found to be using industrial dye and paraffin wax to fraudulently manufacture sweet potato noodles. Earlier this year, the country’s largest meat processor was found to have produced pork containing a banned drug, and last fall a number of people fell critically ill after eating foods made with baking soda tainted by thallium, a toxic metal.

Also, at least in China’s domestic food system, what is purported to be organic is questionable. “If there is a label on it, more likely than not it’s fake,” said a woman who works in an NGO in Beijing that focuses on agriculture and the environment. Revell has heard similar skepticism. “There’s always the question of verification,” he said. His colleague was taken on a tour of what was supposed to be an organic farm in Shandong. “He could see empty cans of agrichemicals around the place, so he wasn’t really convinced.” It’s no surprise foreign consumers and companies would be concerned about such trends crossing over.

After the melamine scandal, Lloyd lost a contract with a major American supermarket that had total sales four times the size of Canada’s, and he said another looked instead to Mexico for stock. Lloyd is now turning back to Ontario for his vegetables. He plans to start sourcing his organic vegetables in the province this summer to sell in Canadian supermarkets. Other conventional frozen vegetable brands, such as Green Giant and Arctic Gardens, have “Grown in Canada” lines. “Demand is pushing local. People are getting more educated about food in general,” said Lloyd. “Times change.”

]]>If you’re a canola farmer on Manitoba’s flood-ravaged prairie, what do you do when you can’t plant your seeds because your fields are too wet for your tractor? John Gibson and his team at Provincial Helicopters, Ltd., have a solution: hire one of their helicopters to do it for you. “The farmers are really having a hard time of it,” says Gibson, president and chief pilot of the company based in Lac du Bonnet, Man. “Getting the seed on the ground, even if it is wet, is a high priority right now.”

Rob Pettinger, president of the Manitoba Canola Growers Association, says this is one of the wettest seasons he’s ever seen. In some regions, he expects canola to produce just 10 per cent of its normal yield. But Gibson says the rain-soaked fields, while a problem for tractors, are just wet enough for the seeds they drop from their helicopters to land without being damaged. He and his team have already planted seeds for three farmers this season, and they have received interest from at least 15 more.

When hired, Gibson’s team mounts a seeding system to a helicopter. In the back, a hopper is filled with thousands of canola seeds. The seeds are then dropped into a large circular dispenser that hangs like a wheel beneath the helicopter. As the aircraft flies back and forth at about 30 feet above the ground, the wheel spins, spitting out seeds.

It costs farmers $14 an acre to use Gibson’s helicopters to seed their fields (it normally costs $2 to $3 an acre to sow canola). Gibson recognizes his service is expensive, but says many farmers are desperate to plant their seeds before it’s too late. “We have to get the crop up,” he says. “That’s what everyone’s shooting for.” Pettinger understands the urgency, but isn’t convinced it’s worth hiring a chopper to do the job. “Maybe it’s better to wave the white flag,” he says. “Next year is another year.”

Following in the controversial footsteps of Arizona’s lawmakers, the ruling Republican party in Georgia introduced beefed-up immigrant legislation earlier this spring. The bill, HB 87, empowers police to question the immigration status of criminal suspects and demands business owners use E-Verify, a federal database, to check a prospective employee’s immigration status. HB 87 will take effect July 1. But, just as in Arizona, a class-action lawsuit was filed against the legislation: last week, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), along with several rights organizations and individuals, challenged the law in federal district court. “This legislation turns Georgia into a police state,” says Azadeh Shahshahani of the Georgia chapter of the ACLU. Even Carlos Santana weighed in on the national debate: “The people of Arizona, the people of Atlanta, Georgia, you should be ashamed of yourselves,” said Santana earlier this month at Major League Baseball’s annual civil rights game.

Along with opposition from civil rights groups, leaders of the agricultural industry—one of Georgia’s largest—are protesting the bill. Charles Hall, executive director of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, says migrant workers have “heard horror stories of people being harassed, being deported, being stopped at a licence check.” As a result, says Hall, farm workers are bypassing Georgia, causing a massive labour shortage in the state and sending the $1.1-billion industry into a tailspin. Hall reports farmers are experiencing labour shortages of up to 50 per cent, and estimates that a quarter of Georgia’s crops will go unharvested—representing some $300 million in lost revenue.

Although Georgia’s unemployment rate sits at 9.9 per cent, Hall says hiring domestic workers isn’t an option. “If we could get domestic workers to do our field work, we would,” he says, “but they’re not available.” Domestic workers might work in the cooler packing houses, but not in the fields. “It’s back-breaking work,” says Hall.

Despite the economic ramifications and costly court cases of the immigrant bills, the governments of Alabama and South Carolina are looking to introduce kindred legislation—capitalizing on anti-immigrant sentiment to win votes. Charles Kuck, a partner in a law firm that helped prepare the Georgia lawsuit, says Americans can expect to see more copycat bills “until Congress does its job and reshapes and corrects our national immigration policy.”

Renting land to prop up a dictatorship: that’s how some see the return of a new group of about 120 white farmers to Zimbabwe’s contested agricultural land, where they are leasing plots from supporters of President Robert Mugabe. “These farmers handed Mr. Mugabe victory,” former Zimbabwe Tobacco Association president Andy Ferreira told London’s Telegraph newspaper.

Land is a sore point in Zimbabwe. Over the last decade, more than 4,000 white farmers were forced from their farms as a result of invasions ordered by the 86-year-old Mugabe. The parcels of land were to be handed over to the black majority—a supposed correction of colonial injustices. But the redistribution was accompanied by violence: white farmers faced assault, arson, and about two dozen died during the invasions (of the 278,000 whites who once populated Zimbabwe, only about 12,000 remain.) And that land reform has been widely seen as the reason for Zimbabwe’s economic collapse, and the fallowing of what was once Africa’s breadbasket—agricultural production has dropped by 60 per cent since 2000.

That may be due to the fact that, as a recent investigation by the national news agency ZimOnline has revealed, the Zimbabwean president used the land reforms to reward himself and his supporters—many of whom knew nothing about agriculture—instead of empowering the black majority. Some 40 per cent of 14 million hectares seized from whites is now owned by Mugabe and his cronies. All ministers and deputy ministers in his party are multiple farm owners, and Mugabe and his wife reportedly hold 14 farms with 16,000 hectares of land.

Now, the Telegraph is reporting that there’s been a revival in agricultural production—and it’s because of those returning white farmers who are restoring the land to its former glory. But in order to work on the farms they once ran, they are doing deals with Mugabe’s supporters—the real beneficiaries of land reform. Andy Ferreira has asked international traders to boycott tobacco grown on the disputed land. His term for the harvest? “Blood tobacco.”

Even Queen guitarist Brian May has spoken against the ‘slaughter’; Cater News/Keystone Press

“Good heavens, this business about badgers has been rumbling on for nearly 40 years!” declares Jack Reedy, spokesman for Britain’s Badger Trust, a charity devoted to “the conservation and welfare” of badgers. “It’s about time it was sorted.”

The “business” in question is Britain’s controversial badger cull proposed for next spring—an effort to control the spread of bovine tuberculosis (bTB), which has been on the rise over the past four decades. The disease is particularly serious in the southwest of England and Wales, where badgers are known to be carriers.

Last month, Elin Jones, Wales’s rural affairs minister, and Britain’s secretary of state for agriculture, Jim Paice, announced separately they would support proposals for major badger culls. In Wales, this would take the form of government run bio-security measures, including restricting the movement of cattle, in tandem with a supervised badger control program. In England, however, the proposal would simply license farmers to shoot the protected species at will.

It is widely accepted, both by scientists and farmers alike, that the sturdy, striped members of the weasel family are carriers of bovine TB, which last year accounted for the slaughter of roughly 30,000 cattle in the area and cost taxpayers more than $100 million in testing and compensation (transmission, it is believed, occurs when infected badger urine and fecal matter are left upon cattle pastures). It’s a crisis that National Farmers Union president Peter Kendall describes as “out of control,” and in danger of spreading to other species. “It’s important to be clear: this is not about eradicating badgers, it’s about disease control,” he said.

But the badger lobby in Britain is as stubborn and tenacious as, well, badgers themselves. They argue the government’s culling proposals are counterproductive and designed primarily to appease the farm lobby. It’s no secret Britain is a nation of animal lovers—and many have a particular soft spot for the long-snouted indigenous omnivores best known for their deadly locking jaws and talent for food hoarding. Among them is the Badger Trust, which survives on donations and acts as the umbrella group for 60 local pro-badger groups across the country, and has been around since the ’70s. It was formed partly in opposition to badger baiting, an ancient and illegal blood sport in which a succession of dogs are set upon a cornered badger, which fights to the death.

While the trust was successful in convincing the Court of Appeal to overturn the planned cull for all of Wales last summer, the recent announcements from the principality—which now wants to target areas with high bTB rates—and Westminster have made it clear that the badger crusaders are being forced into a corner yet again. The trust’s Reedy vehemently dismissed piecemeal culling (i.e., farmers being licensed to shoot badgers on their own properties) as ineffective and “a good way for farmers to administer self-inflicted wounds for years to come.” It’s a position echoed by Rosie Woodroffe, a disease ecologist at the Institute of Zoology in London, whose 2007 independent study on badger culling is widely regarded as the most exhaustive and conclusive in its field. “I think it is scientifically among the worst options they could have chosen,” she recently told the Guardian of the government’s decision to license farmers to cull.

Badgers are naturally territorial, so when one population is killed, neighbouring critters will automatically move into the unused burrows, feasting on the leftover food stores and, if the previous family was infected with bTB, contract and spread the disease. According to Woodroffe, the only effective method of eradicating bTB in the badger population would be a vaccination effort combined with a large-scale cull carried out in an organized, cohesive way. It’s a seriously expensive prospect—and one that Westminster seems to have rejected out of hand. The Welsh government, on the other hand, maintains it is proposing to do something more controlled, but Reedy is skeptical they will abide by the scientific recommendations—which would be both costly and time-consuming. “The research has shown us that not unless you get above 70 per cent of badgers culled in a 300-sq.-km area will it make a whit of difference,” he says.

To make matters even more complicated, other badger activists, including Queen guitarist Brian May, contend that there is insufficient evidence to link badgers to cattle infected with bTB in the first place. “The sudden outbreaks of bTB in areas of Britain hundreds of miles apart cannot possibly be blamed on badgers, which never travel more than three or four miles from their homes in their lifetimes,” he wrote in the Guardian, condemning the proposed cull as a “slaughter” of “ancient and innocent creatures.”

It’s a controversial debate that has the two sides as firmly entrenched as a couple of baited critters. And it shows no sign of resolving itself soon. “The science behind badger behaviour is intensely sophisticated. You’ve simply got to sit down with a wet towel around your head and sort it all out,” says Reedy. Yet he remains optimistic the British badger will continue to thrive despite the uphill battle ahead. “They’re very dogged individuals who will do what it takes to survive. You’ve heard the phrase, ‘Don’t badger me’? Well, that’s where it comes from.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/ancient-and-innocent-creatures/feed/2Investment house on the Prairieshttp://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/investment-house-on-the-prairies/
http://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/investment-house-on-the-prairies/#commentsThu, 23 Sep 2010 15:20:45 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=147404A Toronto firm plans to build the world’s biggest farm, and maybe one day a brand name in food

The seed of what would become One Earth Farms was planted years ago when Kevin Bambrough, the president and CEO of Sprott Resource Corp., was standing in the middle of a sprawling field on the Canadian Prairies. Bambrough discovered that most of the land around him belonged to First Nations, but that very few Aboriginals were involved in farming it (the land is instead leased out). He spotted a rare opportunity to grab a massive chunk of an industry that’s still dominated by smaller, family-owned farms in Canada, but where most of the money is increasingly being made by larger, corporate-run operations.

“What was typically happening is, guys would come in and lease a smaller chunk of land for their family operation,” says Steve Yuzpe, the CFO of Sprott Resource, an arm of the investment firm founded by legendary investor Eric Sprott. “No one thought to take the next step.” That step was to launch negotiations with some 40 different First Nations who control two million acres of land in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and offer them a chance to participate in the business. The goal is to eventually create a giant, one-million-acre operation, scattered over the three provinces, that would rank among the biggest farms in the world.

Launched last year with an initial $27.5-million investment, One Earth now boasts some 93,000 acres under administration, already making it the second-largest farm operation in the country. The farms raise livestock and grow canola, wheat, field peas, oats and barley. There are plans to add flax, lentils and chickpeas.

It’s not yet a profitable enterprise, however. Because of its anticipated size, One Earth faces high start-up and labour costs. Potential revenues have also been impacted by an exceptionally rainy planting season that resulted in only 60 per cent of One Earth’s farmland being seeded.

But it could have been worse. Yuzpe argues that a key aspect of One Earth’s model is that its farms are spread out over a large region, helping to mitigate such weather-related risks.

Not everyone is convinced One Earth’s giant farm will work. Critics point out that One Earth may be geographically diversified, but they still have a lot riding on individual crops. “They have all of this land, so if prices drop they have huge losses,” says Kevin Wipf, the executive director of the National Farmers Union, adding that smaller farms can be more flexible. There are also concerns about the impact big corporate farms have on the land. While Sprott touts One Earth as being more sustainable because the landowners—the First Nations—are participants, others like Saskatchewan farmer and NFU president Terry Boehm note that several companies have tried and failed to manage vast agricultural regions.

Sprott, however, believes the key to farming is size and access to capital—an approach that’s backed up by a 2008 Statistics Canada study that found that bigger farms tend to be more profitable. The company is also hoping to further boost profitability by eventually becoming more involved in the creation of food products that appear on grocery store shelves. “People understand that First Nations have a strong connection to their land and to ‘natural’ and ‘sustainable,’ and those are our beliefs as well,” says Yuzpe. “Down the road, I think there’s a real opportunity to create a real positive consumer brand associated with all of these products.”

Visit a supermarket in Abu Dhabi and you’ll be greeted by row after row of picture-perfect produce, most of it imported. The Indian subcontinent has long supplied food to the wealthy desert capital. These days, though, it’s likely those rows of shiny vegetables and fruit came from an improbable source: Ethiopia, a country practically synonymous with famine. Yes, Africa, where one in three people is malnourished, is now growing tomatoes and butter lettuce for export.

Ethiopia’s biggest greenhouse farming operation is kept hidden from curious, or hungry, eyes; even in Awassa, the southern city where it’s housed, few know it exists. Two kilometres down a dusty private road, past a checkpoint guarded with AK47s, hundreds of pristine, white greenhouses suddenly appear, alien to the setting. Farming in Ethiopia is still done by sickle and ox-driven plough. But inside Awassa’s cool, humidity-controlled greenhouses, vines are fed by a computerized irrigation system, the latest Dutch agricultural technology.

Every day, a workforce of 1,000 locals pick, pack and load hundreds of tons of fresh produce onto waiting trucks, including 30 tons of tomatoes alone. After reaching the capital, Addis Ababa, the produce is flown to a handful of Middle Eastern cities, entirely bypassing Ethiopia, one of the hungriest places on the planet. The trip from vine to store shelf takes less than 24 hours. It’s the latest project by Saudi oil and mining billionaire, Sheikh Mohammed Al Amoudi. And it may be the future of farming.

Over the past 18 months, plantations like this one have been sprouting across Africa. Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia—rich in oil, but water-poor—as well as those dependent on imports like South Korea and Japan, and rising powers like China and India, have begun leasing vast tracts of land in Africa, outsourcing food production to the continent. Agribusiness and Western hedge funds are funnelling billions into the new projects, banking on future scarcity.

The controversial trend has been dubbed “outsourcing’s third wave”—following manufacturing and information technology (IT) in the ’80s and ’90s. The high cost of installing irrigation systems, and importing fertilizers, combines and tractors is no deterrent. Defenders of the new projects say they’re bringing desperately needed new technologies, seeds and investment to Africa. But opponents see the trend as a “land grab” that is forcing poor farmers off their land, and benefiting only the governments inking the deals.

Already, commercial farms dot the northbound highway to Addis Ababa. In the evenings, a steady stream of trucks loaded with fat, sumptuous berries and cherry-red tomatoes rumble past, rushing to Bole International Airport and Gulf state grocery stores beyond. The highway’s dusty shoulders, meanwhile, are littered with the carcasses of animals dead from starvation and disease, the bones bleached white from the sun. The contrast is grim, even by local standards.

The new scramble for Africa was triggered by a convergence of events: surging demand for biofuels, rising consumption patterns in China and India and the 2008 global food crisis, when the price of corn and wheat tripled, almost overnight. Responding to sudden hyperinflation, rioting and panic buying, at least 30 countries, including Argentina, Vietnam, Brazil, Cambodia and India, banned or sharply reduced food exports. In short order, Japan and South Korea, who import 70 per cent of their grains, joined a parade of countries turning to Africa to lock in means of production beyond their borders.

The scale of the effort is astonishing. More than 125 million acres—an area roughly equal in size to Sweden—has been or is being negotiated for lease or sale in poorer countries, mostly in Africa, according to a recent estimate. In Sudan alone, the U.A.E. and South Korea have leased one and two million acres respectively, for crops including corn, alfalfa, potatoes and beans; Egypt has enough land there to grow two million tons of wheat annually, and Saudi Arabia and Jordan have leased 25,000 and 60,000 acres each, mainly to grow wheat and corn. In February, the U.S. investment firm BlackRock launched a world agriculture fund, earmarking US$30 million for farmland acquisitions; Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley already offer investors access to similar funds. Calgary’s Agcapita, a three-year-old firm focused exclusively on farmland investment, says private equity firms have lined up some US$3 billion for farmland in developing countries.

Mostly, the deals fly under the radar. Sometimes, their size or sheer audacity triggers attention—like former AIG trader Philippe Heilberg’s deal to lease one million acres in Darfur. When it emerged that Daewoo, the South Korean giant, had signed a 99-year lease granting it close to half of Madagascar’s arable land, protests broke out in Antananarivo, the country’s capital, eventually sinking both the deal, and the president.

Why Africa? Not only is land roughly one-tenth the price of land in Asia, it’s likely the “final frontier,” says Paul Christie, marketing director at Emergent Asset, a London investment firm investing several hundred million dollars in commercial farms in Africa. Some 90 per cent of the world’s arable land is thought to be in use. Also, as Heilberg told the German magazine Der Spiegel after closing the deal in Darfur, “When food becomes scarce, the investor needs a weak state that does not force him to abide by any rules.” Sudan, a dictatorship ranked among the five most corrupt countries on the planet, certainly qualifies. Heilberg’s deal was approved by the deputy commander of Sudan’s People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), the official army of semi-autonomous southern Sudan. “This is Africa,” he recently told Rolling Stone. “The whole place is like one big mafia. I’m like a mafia head. That’s the way it works.”

He’s now looking to double his Sudanese holdings. In so doing, he’ll also gain access to hundreds of million of gallons of scarce water resources—the hidden impulse behind this new play on Africa, says Michael Taylor, with the Rome-based International Land Coalition. “Saudi Arabia has no shortage of land.

Its interest in Africa,” he says, “is water.” What we tend to think of as a dry continent actually has more water resources per capita than Europe, and drought-ridden countries from the Persian Gulf to Asia want in. In places, Taylor warns, investors are walking away with two-page contracts covering 99-year leases. No matter what the harm—over-consumption of water, over-fertilization, deforestation—“governments will be powerless to make changes.” South Korea’s Sudanese plantation will draw from the Nile, threatening Egypt’s food security downstream. Already experts warn of a brewing conflict between the nine Nile states—including favourite destinations for foreign farms: Sudan, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Kenya. Can the region shoulder the added water strain?

But the land deals also offer a chance to reverse decades of under-investment in Africa—which was bypassed by the Green Revolution that, in the ’60s and ’70s, transformed India and China. In much of the poor world, “land is not primal forest,” says Oxford economist Paul Collier; “it is just badly farmed.”

Collier, among the best-known voices on global poverty, argues that the West’s “love affair with peasant agriculture” is clouding the development debate on Africa. “Our peasantry vanished for a simple reason—it was inefficient,” says the author of The Bottom Billion, pointing to emerging market successes like Brazil, where large-scale industrial farms have replaced small holdings. “Commercial farms innovate,” he writes, “because scale helps to overcome the impediments faced by the small.” Some African intellectuals bridle at Western criticism of the play on Africa. “They’re here because we want them here,” says Teshome Gabre-Mariam, one of Ethiopia’s top lawyers. “We can’t ignore the development potential of this venture. We have everything to gain, nothing to lose.”

These days the severity of the food crisis has eased, but not forever. By 2050, when the global population tips nine billion, demand for food will have risen by as much as 70 per cent, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Food commodity prices continue to climb alongside rising energy prices and desertification is accelerating from Australia to China to Spain; the rising temperatures are predicted to slash yields. In places, that’s already begun. Like it or not, hungry eyes will increasingly zero in on Africa. The world, it seems, may come to depend on it.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/out-of-africa/feed/4Who wants to be a farmer?http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/who-wants-to-be-a-farmer/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/who-wants-to-be-a-farmer/#commentsThu, 01 Jul 2010 17:20:55 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=134711The New Russian Village offers new homes, modern family farms and competitive pay

Russians are being offered the chance of a lifetime in a multi-million-dollar private venture that gives them new homes, modern family farms and competitive pay. The project, called the New Russian Village, aims to revive Russia’s countryside by funding a collection of privately run single-owner farms.

The village is equipped with webcams so that the farmers can determine what’s happening on their land at any given time. Recruits do not have to have farm experience, but they must complete a probationary period of six months before signing a contract for 10 years. Those who are chosen can earn up to $1,000 a month, and become outright owners of their house and farm within the decade.

The first phase of construction is complete, with 24 houses and 24 livestock farms. “Not many people believe it’s for real. However, there is a huge competition to get a place here,” pig farmer Aleksandr told a reporter. “I was lucky to get chosen.” Yury Schevchenko, the co-investor and manager behind the $170-million project, says there were 19,000 applicants for the first 150 slots. He hopes to change the usual production model by cutting out retailers so the farmers sell directly to the public and keep more of the profit. Over the coming years, he hopes to expand the village to several hundred farms.

An eight-day deep freeze that hit Florida in January wiped out more than two-thirds of the winter tomato crop, causing prices to spike across the continent and some U.S. fast-food chains to eliminate or ration the juicy red vegetable (technically a fruit, according to botanists). In response, farmers rushed to fill the void and now, several months later, we’re in the midst of a massive tomato glut.

While Canada was insulated from the worst of the winter shortage thanks to local greenhouse production, shoppers on both sides of the border are expected to benefit from the oversupply thanks to falling tomato prices (an 11 kg box of fresh field tomatoes now costs about US$6.95, compared to US$31.95 in early March, according to Bloomberg).

That’s good for consumers, but bad for U.S. tomato farmers. In response, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said this month that it will buy up as many as US$6 million worth of tomatoes for use in federal nutrition assistance programs. “The purchase announced today will provide Florida fresh tomato farmers with some relief, stimulate the economy, and provide high quality, nutritious food to people in need,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said of a program designed to solve several pressing problems with one fruit. Or vegetable.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/idea-alert-25/feed/94Convene one emergency committee meeting, get the second one free – and we’ll throw in an ITQ poll too!http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/convene-one-emergency-committee-meeting-get-the-second-one-free-and-well-throw-in-an-itq-poll-too/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/convene-one-emergency-committee-meeting-get-the-second-one-free-and-well-throw-in-an-itq-poll-too/#respondTue, 25 Aug 2009 14:50:40 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=77497Hey, remember last Friday, when ITQ was rambling on about all those possible emergency committee meetings that the opposition parties were hoping to 106(4) into existence? Well, turns out she…

]]>Hey, remember last Friday, when ITQ was rambling on about all those possible emergency committee meetings that the opposition parties were hoping to 106(4) into existence? Well, turns out she wasn’t suffering from end-of-August delirium: both Foreign Affairs and Agriculture will be back in business later this week , dealing with motions to “study the treatment of Canadians abroad by the Government of Canada” and “[hold] a meeting on the Report of the Independent Investigator into the 2008 Listeriosis Outbreak, and the Government’s response,” respectively.

The catch? According to the schedule, the two meetings will be happening at the exact same time, which means that ITQ has to decide which one deserves full liveblogging coverage, and which one she can catch in reruns on CPAC. She’s currently leaning towards Foreign Affairs, which seems to hold far more potential for drama, particularly if the opposition can come up with a decent witness list, but she’s willing to entertain arguments in favour of the Aggies too. (And no, she doesn’t promise to be bound by the results of the following poll, but it will definitely be taken into account when she makes her final decision.)

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/convene-one-emergency-committee-meeting-get-the-second-one-free-and-well-throw-in-an-itq-poll-too/feed/0The revolution will eventually end up on YouTubehttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-revolution-will-eventually-end-up-on-youtube/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-revolution-will-eventually-end-up-on-youtube/#commentsTue, 18 Aug 2009 06:16:05 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=76428This footage is apparently a couple months old, but it is indeed Michael Ignatieff standing up in public and saying things about stuff—specifically arctic sovereignty, agriculture, Conservative attack ads, Afghanistan,…

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-revolution-will-eventually-end-up-on-youtube/feed/18Water fightshttp://www.macleans.ca/society/life/water-fights/
http://www.macleans.ca/society/life/water-fights/#commentsMon, 06 Jul 2009 12:46:46 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=67100Much of the world is desperately short of fresh water. Are future water wars inevitable?

]]>Every few days, another farmer commits suicide in Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin, the agricultural heartland. Many, according to Australian evolutionary biologist Tim Flannery, haven’t had any water in almost four years—in places, the allocation of irrigation water has been cut to zero. Their farms have dried up, leaving a dusty, wind-whipped scrubland. Cattle bellow from hunger through the night. “Despair is an enormous problem,” says Flannery. “There is no sign the situation will ever improve.” Government has compiled a suicide watch list.

The world’s flattest, driest and most vulnerable inhabited continent is gravely low on water. The “Mighty Murray”—Australia’s Mississippi—is on the verge of collapse: in places, children can hop over it. National production of rice has fallen from a million tons annually to 21,000 tons last year, contributing to soaring global food prices. Cotton and citrus are also crashing. The problem is now creeping into the cities. Earlier this year, the national water commissioner announced that, as of 2010, he could no longer guarantee security of supply of water for critical use to Adelaide, says Flannery, author of the acclaimed book The Weather Makers. “That’s Australia’s fifth-largest city.” Two years ago, the prime minister urged Aussies to “pray for rain—literally, and without any irony.”

Australians, proudly “sunburnt” according to the hackneyed national myth, have withstood long dry spells before. But the current seven-year drought has come to be known as “the big dry.” It is the longest, hottest and most devastating in the country’s history. To Flannery, Australia, the world’s 15th-biggest economy, is a climate canary, learning first the hard lessons on the limits of water in an era of shifting weather patterns. He reckons the western U.S. may be hit next.

The crisis in Australia is an extreme version of shortages hitting the U.S. Southwest, Israel and North Africa, focusing attention on what may be the most immediate environmental crisis facing the world: shortages of water. Far more than oil, our societies run on water. And unlike oil, there is no substitute for it. Yet an increasing body of evidence suggests there simply isn’t enough to support future population and economic growth, not to mention waste born of years of abundance in places like Canada, one of the world’s biggest water consumers.

From Tofino to Tucson, hydrologists, limnologists and government officials are reporting similar climatic trends: a longer dry season, less snow, more rain and earlier spring melts. “Half the annual flow of the Fraser now occurs nine days early,” says Steve Litke of the Fraser Basin Council, a Vancouver NGO that studies the health of the massive watershed—home to two-thirds of B.C.’s population. These shifting climate patterns are changing “where, when and how” water falls and flows, eroding our ability to manage water for large populations, says Meena Palaniappan, with the San Francisco-based Pacific Institute.

Take California: snowpack from the Sierra Nevada mountain range provides the bulk of its water. But even the most optimistic climate models are showing a 30 to 70 per cent reduction of the Sierra Nevada snowpack by the second half of the century. This year, snowfall in the mountain range was down to about two-thirds of normal. By 2050, California’s population will have grown to 60 million, up from 36 million today. The “exploding” human population in the U.S. Southwest and its shrinking clean water supply are clearly on two “colliding paths,” acknowledges Pat Mulroy, the outspoken head of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. She oversees Las Vegas, the most vulnerable metro area on the continent, still “very much in the throes of an ugly drought” now entering its ninth year.

By contrast, Canada, with 20 per cent of the world’s freshwater resources, and less than one per cent of its population, looks like the Saudi Arabia of water. China, for example, has less than half Canada’s supply and 40 times as many people. Still, scientists warn that Canada is facing a distribution problem: 80 per cent of the country’s water resources are locked in the north, while 80 per cent of the population is packed along the U.S. border. Freshwater is scarce in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, says David Schindler, one of the country’s top water scientists. There, he adds, lakes were retreating even in the 20th century: the wettest century of the past millennium, according to tree-ring fieldwork done by the universities of Arizona and Regina. Schindler predicts a likely mid-century return to ’30s-era, “dust-bowl” conditions—yes, even in Manitoba, land of 100,000 lakes—noting a 30 to 85 per cent reduction in summer river flows in the previous 30 years.

As aquifers under Beijing, Delhi, San Antonio and dozens more cities with mushrooming populations dry up, some experts suggest the era of cheap, easy access to water is coming to an end. Palaniappan calls it “peak water”: the point when demand outstrips renewable supply, and resources trend ominously downward. Humans, she says, are extracting and polluting it faster than it can be replenished. “In the developing world, more than 90 per cent of all sewage, and 70 per cent of industrial waste, is dumped untreated into surface water,” says Robert Sandford, Canadian chair of the UN Water for Life initiative, noting that 75 per cent of the river water flowing through China’s cities is unfit for drinking or fishing. This summer, Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the U.S., which supplies nearly all the water for Las Vegas, fell to 43 per cent capacity. The Scripps Institute of Oceanography has given it 50-50 odds of surviving to 2021. Levels on the Sea of Galilee, the largest freshwater source in Israel—locked into year five of a devastating drought—have fallen to within inches of the “danger line.” Last year, Atlanta came within 90 days of running out of water.

The economic impact of water scarcity is grim: in the past two years, new power plants in four U.S. states, as well as several dozen commercial and residential development projects in California, have been cancelled because developers weren’t able to secure long-term water supplies. This summer, as California approaches its fourth year of drought, up to 30,000 workers will be laid off in its 650-km-long Central Valley, the country’s agricultural engine. Economic losses could top a half-billion dollars. In Australia, they’ve surpassed $20 billion.

As droughts and crises multiply, academics have begun grappling with the darker question of whether such shortages will push citizens—and even countries—into hostile factions of water-rich and water-poor. By mid-century, some of the world’s most populous, troubled regions are predicted to be dangerously water-scarce, including southern and central Asia, the Middle East and northeast Africa. This spring, a landmark report compiled by 24 UN agencies warned of a near future marred by war and conflict over water, sparked by so-called water bankruptcies.

But while it is newly popular to suggest the world’s next resource wars will be fought over water, and not oil, researchers at Oregon State University have found reason for optimism. Of the 1,831 documented disputes over freshwater resources in the last 50 years, 67 per cent were co-operative, while only 28 per cent resulted in conflict. The Indus Commission, a water sharing treaty between India and Pakistan, not only survived two wars, but, in the middle of one, India made treaty payments to Pakistan, says study author Aaron Wolf. Shared water can act like an “elixir,” bringing warring sides to the table to co-operate, he says.

Often, however, this looks like “asymmetrical co-operation,” where terms are dictated by the stronger side, says former water engineer Mark Zeitoun, who teaches international development in Britain. Consider the Nile basin, often cited as an example of multilateral co-operation over shared water resources. A 1959 agreement grants Egypt 87 per cent of the river’s waters, and Sudan the remaining 13 per cent. Ethiopia, whose highlands supply 86 per cent of Nile water, receives nothing (Egypt has threatened to bomb Ethiopia should it attempt to build a dam). After a decade of “co-operation” under the auspices of the CIDA-funded Nile Basin Initiative, regional hegemon Egypt retains its 87 per cent stake. Ethiopia still gets nothing.

Tensions are rising as shortages intensify, says Zeitoun, noting simmering water conflicts along the Tigris and Brahmaputra, and intra-state conflicts in China’s Yellow Basin and the Basra region of Iraq. Two Pakistani provinces, Punjab and Sindh—the last in line for the Indus water before it reaches the sea—are routinely at odds over water. In Sindh, many fishers and farmers reliant on the rapidly declining delta ecosystem have simply given up and fled to cities—water refugees. In Darfur, where rainfall is down 30 per cent over 40 years, evaporating water holes and disappearing pasture helped push farmers and herders into civil war.

History has clearly shown that we solve water shortages through trade and international agreements, and not by picking up a gun. The shortfalls that await us, however, have no historical precedent. You can’t buy water from a country that is afraid it is not going to have enough for its own people.